Sounding rocket to launch student experiments from Wallops on June 24

Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia is scheduled to launch a sounding rocket carrying student-developed experiments for the agency’s RockSatX and RockOn programs Wednesday, June 24, between 5:30 and 9:30 a.m. EDT, with a backup day on Thursday, June 25. For the first time, the RockSat and RockOn missions will fly together on a single rocket, carrying experiments developed by nearly 250 participants from 38 university and community college teams.

“The challenge was finding ways to fit as many experiments onto one sounding rocket as we could,” said Victoria Stoffel, workforce development lead at Wallops. RockOn teams build their experiments onsite, gaining hands-on experience putting together a circuit board from scratch and launching it into space.

More advanced RockSat teams design and build experiments and go through design reviews modeled on larger missions; projects include measuring weather and radiation in Earth’s upper atmosphere and testing technologies such as heat shields, space-debris tracking, and robotic servicing.

United States, Virginia

sounding rocket, wallops, rocksatx, rockon, student experiments, university teams, community college, design reviews, upper atmosphere, space debris