Missions · Active
AssemblyBobcatOrbiter
A TubeSat carrying environmental and radiation sensors — and the first satellite designed and built entirely at Texas State University.
A first satellite, by design
BobcatOrbiter is a TubeSat — a small, cylindrical satellite formfactor — built from a kit and flight purchased from Interorbital Systems with grant funding secured by Dr. Rangelov.
The point of BobcatOrbiter isn’t scientific novelty; it’s institutional readiness. We want Texas State to be a place that builds and operates spacecraft, and that means starting somewhere. The lessons, documentation, and ground infrastructure produced by this mission feed directly into the next, more ambitious one — and the one after that.
Payload
BobcatOrbiter carries a set of environmental sensors that monitor the spacecraft itself — battery voltage, internal temperature, and similar housekeeping data — alongside a science payload of two radiation sensors that record nominal radiation levels at the orbiter’s altitude. All telemetry is transmitted back to Earth and surfaced in our ground command in the lab.
