Contact: Robbie Ward
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Mississippi State and a Starkville high-technology business are forming a partnership to develop small, low-cost satellites for the United States market.
University officials recently joined with InfiniSat, a company spun off from MSU research, to work with the federal research agencies in developing less expensive, but highly effective technologies that can be deployed quickly.
David Shaw said the goal is construction of "a full spaceflight mission operations and training center for Mississippi with capabilities to track and communicate with satellites passing overhead."
Information from these satellites will be used for everything from weather prediction and earth imaging to disaster monitoring and communication, said Shaw, director of the Northern Gulf Institute, an MSU-based cooperative program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
University leaders said the new partnership continues an institutional commitment to bring world-class capabilities to the Magnolia State.
"This creates opportunities for students and faculty to get hands-on experience building and operating real spacecraft," said Kirk Schulz, MSU's vice president for research and economic development.
The project will have a "mission control" center at InfiniSat headquarters in the High Performance Computing Collaboratory, a part of the Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park located adjacent to campus.
InfiniSat chief executive officer Tom Koger said he anticipates the company growing from the small group of founders to a force of more than 100, building satellites and satellite subsystems at the Starkville facility. At present, the staff includes graduate students from the Bagley College of Engineering.
The partnership is the latest chapter in Mississippi State's growing research focus on small satellite technology. Last year, the university and Great Britain-based Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. signed another NASA cooperative agreement.
The land-grant institution also offers a cross-disciplinary graduate degree concentration in small-satellite engineering.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information on MSU's small satellite program, contact Dr. Shaw at 662-325-9575 or dshaw@gri.msstate.edu.
------------------------
For more information about InfiniSat, contact Josh Jeanson at 662-279-8679 or info@infinisat.com.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.