Marshall Swearingen, MSU News Service

BOZEMAN — Culminating years of work, a small satellite designed and built by Montana State University students is set to launch Saturday aboard a cargo resupply rocket bound for the International Space Station.

The bread loaf-sized satellite, called by the acronym IT-SPINS, will dock at the space station until later this spring, then be propelled into orbit and commence a more than six-month mission of measuring the properties of Earth's atmosphere at the edge of outer space.

Since the project kicked off in 2015 with a $1 million grant from the Nation...