Rocket Holding Student Tests from Wallops to Start

NASA says it launched the Terrier-Improved Malemute suborbital sounding rocket at 6:04 a.m. Wednesday from the Wallops Island Flight Facility.

NASA has announced plans to launch a sub-orbital rocket at Wallops Island, Virginia, this week containing experiments from universities across the country, including nearby Virginia Tech.

Live coverage of the mission begins at 5 a.m. on the Wallops Ustream site. The experiments will land in the Atlantic Ocean 63 miles off the Virginia coast, where they will be recovered and then studied by the student science teams.

As per Chris Koehler, director of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, which helps coordinate the program, the launch is related to a program that provides “higher education students an avenue to work as a team and go beyond the classroom into hands-on applications and developing experiments for space”.

The experiments involve examination of a cheap method to return data to controllers on the Earth, first 3-D printer on an uncrewed rocket in addition to research on crystal growth in microgravity.

Among the experiments traveling on the rocket is a 3D printer engineered by Virginia Tech students. They plan to collect information concerning the effects of changing gravitational loads on 3D printing.

The launch is part of the RockSat-X program, which gives students an opportunity to design experiments for space flight.

Other participating institutions are the University of Colorado, Boulder; Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, Idaho; the University of Puerto Rico; the University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Capitol Technology University, Laurel, Maryland; and University of Hawai’i Community Colleges at the Honolulu, Kapi’olani, Kaua’i, and Windward campuses.