For aspiring astronautical engineers, being able to design a science experiment and launch it on a NASA rocket is an experience not to be missed. Such an opportunity is provided each summer at the RockOn! workshop, held at the space agency’s Wallops Flight Facility.
This past June, two Capitol students – Aaron Bush and Carl Hansen -- became the first from the school to participate in the six-day workshop. Together with Professor Angela Walters, they built a payload that was placed on the Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket, which reached an altitude of 73.3 miles before splashing down in the Atlantic.
In all, sixty-one university and community college students participated in the June event, which was held in partnership with the Colorado and Virginia Space Grant Consortia.
RockOn! participants learn “how to create and design a mission,” says Bush. “And then you make it. You learn skills like soldering, how to code an Arduino, how to build hardware. You get to see how, in a real NASA mission, an employee can be part of the process from inception to completion.”
Hansen describes it similarly. “We were able to see every step of the process, from building the payload to putting it inside the rocket, and we got to see it while it was on the pad. We got to watch the launch from very close by.”
Capitol’s project was ambitious. The payload included multiple accelerometers, a thermometer, a pressure transducer, gyroscopes, a humidity sensor and a Geiger counter. All the instruments except one of the accelerometers performed correctly.
As a parachute brought the rocket in to a smooth landing, a NASA vessel was on its way to retrieve it. The payloads were then returned to the students for data analysis.
Bush had special reasons to await the successful retrieval. His group’s payload had included two personal items: a star-shaped charm he bought for his newborn daughter, and his wedding band.
“I told my wife about the wedding band and she said ‘you did what?’ It was already on the launch pad and not coming back until the rocket landed in the ocean. I got it back, and it’s on my finger right now.”
He is now one of the few people on the planet whose wedding band has been into space, while his daughter has a keepsake unlike any other.
RockOn!, Bush said, gives students a glimpse of what it’s actually like to work in the industry. “I would say that it makes the ability to actually touch the dream that you’re always reaching for, seem that much more believable.”
“When you’re a little kid, and you want to be involved with space, you can go on tours to your heart’s content at places like the Johnson Space Center at Kennedy but you still always feel like it’s just a distant dream. But here you’re actually at a NASA flight facility, working with NASA personnel, and you’re actually doing something – sure, it’s on a minor level, but you’re doing something that very few people get to do,” he said.
“And you realize that it really is possible for you to touch your dream. It’s like the beginning stages of doing what you’ve always wanted to do. It’s a taste of the space industry. It’s something that helps wake you up and show you that you can do anything.”
Hansen views RockOn! as “probably the greatest event in my career as a student, not only at Capitol but in academia overall.”
“I had been looking forward to this for a very long time. I’m very grateful that I had the experience,” he said.