ROCKSAT-C LETTER TO COMMUNICATION'S
In the fall semester, after a rigorous and competitive design process, eight colleges across the nation were chosen to participate in the RockSat-C program. RockSat-C is an aerospace research opportunity that allows students to design and build a sounding rocket research module (payload) that will be attached to a Terrier-Orion rocket and launched into space out of NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops, Virginia on Thursday, June 22nd at 5:30am (Link to Live Video Stream of Rocket Launch: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/NASA-tv-Wallops). This is the 3rd time HWS will be participating in this program.
After submitting our intent to fly form in September, and successfully completing the design phase in the fall semester, our HWS-RockSat-C team (Students: Jesse Maltese ’20, Hayes Torrence’ 20, Emily Kreps’ 20, William Whiteb’20, Charles Brown ’19, William Ortlieb ’19, Duniya Syed ’19, Zahra Arabzada ’19, Cody Rivera ’17; Advisors: Peter Spacher, Ph.D., Ileana Dumitriu, Ph.D., Chris Demas ’17) was selected as one of eight colleges to participate in the program. During the Spring ’17 semester, the HWS-RockSat-C team constructed and tested their payload, which will detect Muon particles at high altitudes and take spectral images of different layers of earths atmosphere as the rocket ascends and descends and will measure radiation shielding of various plastics.
This year we started a STEM outreach program for Geneva Middle School students to participate in our RockSat-C Project. The outreach program, GSat-1 (Geneva-Satellite Iteration 1 Program), allowed 26 students (6th to 8th graders) to construct part of our payload, which tests the radiation shielding properties of various plastics (PLA, ABS, and Industrial Hemp filament).
Now, our HWS-RockSat-C team is at NASA Wallops Flight Facility and have successfully completed our check In procedure, vibrational and rotational tests (center of mass check to ensure the stability of the rocket on its trajectory). Picture of Payload Attached. Because the middle school students could not travel to Wallops Flight Facility, our team created a website (https://hwsrocksatc.wordpress.com) that blogs our daily activities and tasks at NASA Wallops.
Participating in a NASA Rocket Launch is an experience that few are privileged to have; we are excited and thankful to the Colleges, the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, and NASA Wallops for making this a reality.
The impact of this program has been wide ranging. Previous and current leads of the RockSat-C program have secured coveted internship programs, graduate positions, and jobs around the country. Frank Oplinger ’18 recently accepted an intern position at SpotX, Christopher Demas ’17 recently was accepted at Alpert Medical School at Brown University, and Cody Rivera ’17 took a PMD trainee position at Merrill Lynch.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Keith Kohler, Public Affairs Specialist for NASA Wallops, at keith.a.kohler@nasa.gov or 757.824.1579. You can also contact Cody Rivera, 2017 graduate of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, at cody.rivera@hws.edu or 716.256.8126. You can also contact Professor Advisor Peter Spacher at spacher@hws.edu or Ileana Dumitriu at Dumitriu@hws.edu.
(Carthage College, Old Dominion University, Oregon Tech, Stevens Institute of Technology, Temple University, University of Wisconsin Sheboygan, West Virginia Space Flight Challenge)