NASA project includes UH students’ payload

After a one-day delay due to bad weather, a NASA rocket containing experimental payloads from 15 collegiate institutions — including four University of Hawaii community colleges — launched Sunday from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

The payload flew to an altitude of 94 miles during its suborbital flight. It descended by parachute into the Atlantic, where it was recovered.

The launch was part of the RockSat-X project, which provides opportunities for undergraduate students to supplement classroom learning with the chance to conceptualize, design and build experiments and equipment for use in space.

Collaborating under the jointly operated Project Imua, students from Honolulu, Kapiolani, Kauai and Windward community colleges developed an experiment to eject a naphthalene sublimation rocket and capture imaging of the deployment. In addition, the students will also evaluate a 9-axis IMU motion-­tracking device and take distance data of the sublimation rocket using an infrared rangefinder.

The project is funded through a NASA grant awarded to the Hawaii Space Grant Consortium.

All the experiments were loaded onto a 44-foot NASA Terrier Improved Malemute sounding rocket.

Once the rocket reached an altitude of 91 miles, the payload containing the experiments descended by parachute and landed in the ocean, roughly 64 miles off the Virginia coast. The experiments and data will be provided to the students.

The launch happened at 5:30 a.m. Eastern time, or 11:30 p.m. Saturday Hawaii time.

HCC Project Imua mentor Will Smith and students Cale Mechler and Nick Herrmann were in Virginia for the launch.

Representatives from Project Imua previously visited Wallops Flight Facility in June to conduct preliminary tests on the payload.

Other participating schools include the University of Colorado, Boulder; the University of Puerto Rico; Virginia Tech, Blacksburg; University of Kentucky, Lexington; Capitol Technology University, Laurel, Md.; University of Maryland, College Park; Oregon State University, Corvallis; and a collaboration of West Virginia institutions consisting of West Virginia University, Morgantown; Marshall University, Huntington; West Virginia State University, Institute; West Virginia Tech, Beckley; and Fairmont State.