NASA Nanosatellite to Study Antifungal Drug Effectivenes...(aft builds upon the GeneSat-1 legacy wit...),Health

After PharmaSat separates from the Minotaur 1 rocket and successfully enters low Earth orbit at approximately 285 miles above Earth, it will activate and begin transmitting radio signals to two ground control stations. The primary ground station at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif., will transmit mission data from the satellite to the spacecraft operators in the mission control center at NASA's Ames Research Center. A secondary station is located at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, Calif.

When NASA spaceflight engineers make contact with PharmaSat, which could happen as soon as one hour after launch, the satellite will receive a command to initiate its experiment, which will last 96 hours. Once the experiment begins, PharmaSat will relay data in near real-time to mission managers, engineers and project scientists for further analysis. The nanosatellite could transmit data for as long as six months.

"PharmaSat is an important experiment that will yield new information about the susceptibility of microbes to antibiotics in the space environment," said David Niesel, PharmaSat's co-investigator from the University of Texas Medical Branch Department of Pathology and Microbiology and Immunology in Galveston. "It also will prove that biological experiments can be conducted on sophisticated autonomous nanosatellites."

As with NASA's previous small satellite missions, such as the GeneSat-1, which launched in 2006 and continues to transmit a beacon to Earth, Santa Clara University invites amateur radio operators around the world to tune in to the satellite's broadcast.

For more information and instructions about how to contact PharmaSat, visit: