Development, Installation, and Operation of a Small Satellite Ground Station at a Public High School

For the past three years, the FIRST robotics team at Perkins High School (PHS) has worked to prepare for an educational CubeSat mission. The name of the mission is Foras Promineo, coined by a high school Latin teacher to mean "outreach" or "pushing beyond previous limits." The goals of the mission are (1) to provide a fun, educational experience for the public by giving them real-time control of a robot arm carried by the satellite with very low resolution "live video" (100X100 pixel four color images), and (2) to give PHS students the opportunity to work on an actual space mission. One of the primary tasks PHS has undertaken to support the Foras Promineo mission has been building a ground station that will provide communication to the satellite, in turn controlling its robot arm.