Secure Configurable Autonomous Laboratory for Algorithm Research
Our first satellite, and a laboratory you can reprogram from the ground.
SCALAR is our first satellite. It's a 1U CubeSat, roughly a 10 cm cube, and its job is to prove we can design, build, test, license, and operate a spacecraft from start to finish. The payload is our Mission Operations Framework: instead of hard-coding one experiment before launch, we upload algorithms from the ground and run them on orbit, so a single small bus can host many experiments over its life.
SCALAR's primary mission is to prove WashU Satellite can design, build, and operate a satellite while running our own mission and ground station, earning the orbital heritage every future mission depends on. Its payload is the first orbital deployment of our Mission Operations Framework, making the spacecraft a reconfigurable laboratory for algorithms uploaded after launch. That is the operational foundation VECTOR depends on.
Alongside the satellite itself, our software team is building a Mission Operations Framework: a software pipeline for uploading and controlling orbital experiments entirely from the ground. Building on technologies pioneered by the European Space Agency, the framework will let outside research groups and amateur teams operate their own experiments through an accessible interface on our flight hardware, at no cost.
Algorithms are uploaded and swapped across the mission rather than fixed at launch, letting a single 1U bus run many experiments over its lifetime.
Built on open-source CubeSat hardware and software, mainly the PROVES Kit. Borrowing a flight-proven baseline is what makes a first satellite on a student timeline realistic.
Ground-based pipeline for uploading and running experiments on flight hardware, designed to host external user payloads as well as our own.