“We have looked forward to seeing CAPSat deployed from the ISS and meeting the team’s mission objectives. “Our LASSI lab has enjoyed working with such world-class physicists as Paul Kwiat and Thomas Jennewein to attempt this exciting experiment in a small satellite form factor,” Lembeck said. It was Lembeck’s team who assembled the satellite and designed its circuitry. Kwiatt says that the project wouldn’t be possible without the 40 years of in-flight mission experience Lembeck provided. The satellite arrived on the ISS in late August via a SpaceX resupply mission. Much of the work was done by undergraduate students at UIUC, two of whom personally delivered CAPSat to NASA’s launch service provider Nanoracks in early July. It took six years of planning and experiments to get CAPSat built and deployed into space. Behind-the-scenes look at an in-the-works educational music video I was asked to produce for NASAs CAPSAT program, NASAs UIUC-affiliate student satellite.

“Ranging from the ability to do quantum computing in the cloud-accessing and programming queries on the network without ownership of a quantum computer-to the potential use of the network for distributed quantum sensing, such as a quantum telescope.” “The eventual development of a global quantum internet would enable several further advancements,” Kwiatt said. LASSI achieved first contact with the satellite today at 2:52 p.m.ĬAPSat is only the size of a loaf of bread, but it contains an important experiment that will help engineers determine how to protect a future quantum internet satellite network from radiation in orbit. The Laboratory for Advanced Space Systems at Illinois (LASSI), which Lembeck is director of, handles communication with CAPSat from its ground station in Urbana. A collaborative experiment of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Waterloo, CAPSat (Cool Annealing Payload Satellite) contains single-photon detectors, which can be used as receivers for unhackable quantum communications. Illinois physics professor Paul Kwiat serves as the primary investigator of the project, assisted by Waterloo physics and astronomy professor Thomas Jennewein and Illinois aerospace engineering professor Michael Lembeck.

The satellite known as CAPSat (Cool Annealing Payload Satellite) was constructed as part of a collaborative experiment of the University of Illinois and the University of Waterloo in Canada. (WCIA) – A small satellite built by the University of Illinois’ Department of Physics was deployed into space yesterday from the International Space Station.

Uiuc capsat