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One Colorado satellite recently got a second chance at life—and science—thanks to a group of undergraduate students and professional engineers at the ��ɫ��Ƶ.

In December 2022, an operations team at the (LASP) switched off communications with a spacecraft known as the (CSIM). As far as anyone knew, the mission of this small satellite, or CubeSat, which had launched in 2018, was over.

Members of the small satellites operation team at LASP monitor a spacecraft in orbit. (Credit: LASP)

Adrian Bryant working in operations at LASP. (Credit: LASP)

“We decommissioned it, said goodbye, and we just left it up there in orbit,” said Adrian Bryant, who was an undergraduate student at ��ɫ��Ƶ and a spaceflight operations command controller at LASP at the time.

Years later, Bryant and his colleagues would kick off a race against time to regain control of CSIM, and with just months to go before it burned up in Earth’s atmosphere. They wanted to explore a poorly understood region of space called Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO).

VLEO, which extends from around 150 to 220 miles above Earth’s surface, is a hazardous place. The atmosphere there is many times thicker than it is in Low Earth Orbit, which lies at about 250 to more than 1,000 miles above the surface. Companies and space agencies around the world, however, are increasingly hoping to launch satellites to this region, in part because it offers a closer view of the planet’s surface.

“This is the first time in history that the technology is widely available for people to work in VLEO,” said Bryant, who graduated from ��ɫ��Ƶ with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering sciences last spring and has since begun his master’s degree. “To learn these lessons about VLEO early on could be really helpful for the scientific community and space industry.”

To do that, the researchers faced a big question: Could they operate CSIM, which is about the size of large cereal box, in this turbulent environment?

A second life

When LASP scientists first launched the CubeSat, they never expected to study Earth at all.

Instead, the mission team designed CSIM to collect and analyze radiation streaming from the sun. Like most CubeSats, CSIM, which had a budget of around $9.5 million, wasn’t meant to last long in space. When it experienced anomalies in electronics that were critical to its solar science mission, the team shut it done without too much sadness.

But Sierra Flynn, mission operations director for small satellites at LASP, never gave up on the little craft.

“For years, I hinted to my students—there’s a million-dollar spacecraft up there that you guys could do something with,” Flynn said.

Bryant landed on an idea in early 2025. CSIM was already falling back into Earth’s atmosphere. Could the team use its descent to learn something about VLEO?

Members of LASP's small satellites operations team pose for a photo. From left to right, Adrian Bryant, Reina Krumvieda, Sean Svihla, Adrienne Pickerill, Nicholas Ratajczyk and Sierra Flynn. (Credit: LASP)

From left to right, Adrian Bryant, Sierra Flynn and Nicholas Ratajczyk pose with a model of CSIM at the Small Satellite Conference. (Credit: LASP)

The researchers, he believed, could track CSIM’s motion to map how gases in Earth’s upper atmosphere dragged down the small satellite.

There was just one big problem: The team reestablished communications with CSIM in March 2025 and discovered that the CubeSat was tumbling wildly out of control. At CSIM’s current trajectory, it would burn up by June or July.

Race against time

The operations team scrambled to see if it could regain control of CSIM, which was barreling around Earth at more than 15,000 miles per hour.

Bryant and his colleagues needed to use the CubeSat’s three torque rods—essentially, a series of magnets inside the spacecraft’s body. If the group could align these magnets to Earth’s own magnetic field in just the right way, that would slow down CSIM’s spinning in space.

With trial and error and a lot of luck, the researchers managed to do just that—all by late May, with just weeks to spare.

The group was finally able to run its experiments. In July, the CSIM team tilted the CubeSat at various angles to reduce or increase the drag it experienced while flying through Earth’s atmosphere.

These maneuvers allowed the researchers to explore “the practical difficulties of operating in a ‘high-drag’ environment where the upper atmosphere is thicker, and, consequently, the satellite orbit changes rapidly,” said Marcin Pilinski, a research scientist at LASP who was part of the CSIM project.

A final farewell

The researchers are still analyzing their data, but they have already learned valuable lessons about how to successfully operate spacecraft in VLEO, said Nicholas Ratajczyk. He’s an undergraduate student studying aerospace sciences. Ratajczyk enrolled at ��ɫ��Ƶ after previously earning a bachelor’s degree in German from the University of Northern Colorado in 2010.

“My lifelong passion has always been space,” Ratajczyk said. “I’ve always wanted to work in spaceflight operations, so being able to improve our understanding of operating spacecraft in challenging environments—this is why I came back to school. This is my dream job.”

He and his colleagues are already looking ahead to the next missions they can operate in VLEO. In 2026, another LASP CubeSat, known as the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE), is set to reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

As for CSIM, the small satellite finally met its end in the atmosphere, likely over the weekend.

Bryant and Ratajczyk are presenting the team’s results Wednesday, Aug. 13 at the in Salt Lake City.

“Hopefully, the lessons that we learned here are going can help LASP get the most out of future missions,” Ratajczyk said.