Stanford scientist comes to MSU

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November 2, 2009

By MIKE JAMES — The Independent The Daily Independent Mon Nov 02, 2009, 10:32 PM EST

MOREHEAD — The small town of Morehead is not where one would expect to find a Stanford University scientist.

Especially one whose colleagues like to call him “a rock star in the small satellite world.”

That’s the label Ben Malphrus, director of MSU’s space science program, has pinned on Bob Twiggs, who joined the faculty recently after a long career at one of the premier research institutions in the country.

Twiggs invented the CubeSat standard, which allows scientists to cram multiple space research projects, each of them on a small satellite called a picosatellite, into a single rocket, and also has developed the pocket cube standard, which is even smaller.

He was among the founders of the Kentucky Space program, through which Morehead State has worked on several projects.

Reached by telephone during a week working on the west coast, Twiggs said he had not been retired long before getting the itch to go back to work. He had met Malphrus through his work with Kentucky Space and followed the development of Morehead State’s space program.

He particularly admired the sparkling new space science center on campus “and Ben’s big 21-meter dish (antenna). If you’re a space guy, you always admire a big dish.

“I just asked Ben to let me come play with his toys.”

For a man whose career was spent with other top scientists, Twiggs has a useful skill for the non-space community: he can explain things in a way earthlings can understand.

Here’s how he explains the small-satellite concept:

Satellites can be made in an almost infinite variety of sizes and shapes, but two things remain true: the bigger the payload, the more expensive to launch, and the bigger the satellite, the more research projects scientists will want to load onto it.

Hence the development of picosatellites, about the size of Klondike ice cream bars, packed into a satellite with doors that open by a radio signal. “The satellites pop out like a jack-in-the-box,” he said.

Morehead’s space program is “amazing” for a small school tucked into the hills of eastern Kentucky, Twiggs thinks. “What they’ve been able to do there, I think Morehead should feel good about having something like that.”

He won’t be an isolated, research-only university scientist. “I get such a real pleasure from working with students and getting them excited about what they do,” he said.

Twiggs, 73, was raised on a potato farm in Idaho. After high school, he joined the Air Force following an unsatisfying six weeks at Idaho State University.

In the Air Force he trained as an electronic technician and after his hitch returned to college and majored engineering during the heyday of America’s space program.

After a few years in private industry Twiggs took a faculty position at a small university and got into satellite work.

He is sanguine about the future of the space industry in Kentucky, and the good jobs it will bring to Kentuckians.

He wants to take time to talk to students in area schools about his work. Space still holds a mystique for kids, he believes.

And space still has the same mystique to Bob Twiggs, who loves to be in on the launch of a satellite and to hear the radio signal telling him his payload is in orbit.

“It’s pretty cool to know I’ve got my fingerprint in space.”

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.

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