RockOn! NASA Launched 40 University Students' Experiments Aboard Suborbital Sounding Rocket

Various space news sites recently reported that 40 university student experiments were successfully launched on June 25, 2021, as part of NASA's RockOn! and RockSact-C Programs.

According to SciTechDaily, the said launch was aboard the space agency's suborbital-sounding rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

The takeoff, which took place at 8:32 am EDT, is part of the two programs mentioned, designed specifically for students to learn and apply skills in developing experiments for suborbital space flight.

Students taking part in RockOn! were given instruction on the basics needed to create a scientific payload for flight on the suborbital rocket.

After they learn the basics in RockOn, students may then take part in RockSat-C, where, during the school year, they develop and build a more multifaceted experiment.

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Student Experiments

Carried out with the Colorado and Virginia Space Consortia, RockOn! Is in its 13th year and RockSat-C, in its 12th year.

The 39-foot tall rocket carried 32 experiments measuring acceleration, pressure, humidity, radiation counts and temperature, from the RockOn! Program and eight experiments in the RockSat-C program.

A similar Newsweek report said, launched onboard a two-stage Terrier-Improved Orion rocket, the student experiments flew to a 72-mile and were recovered from the Atlantic Ocean. Following recovery, the experiments will be given back to students.

Following the launch from Wallops, this report specified, is the Dynamos, Winds, and Electric Fields in the Dynamo-2 or Daytime Lower Ionosphere mission. Such a mission comprises the launch of two NASA Black Brant IX sounding rockets from July 6 to 20 this year.

RockOn!

For a lot of students, the chance of designing and building a tiny science instrument at the NASA facility would be considered such an amazing opportunity.

A NASA feature article specified, seeing that particular instrument flown on a NASA rocket during the workshop would create an opportunity that, according to the site, is much more amazing.

Twenty-five university students and professors attended the third RockOn! at the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore of NASA.

In a weeklong event, participants of the workshop developed tiny scientific instrument payloads that were then flown on a sounding rocket of NASA.

RockSat Experiments

The experiments comprised a battery of sensors that took environmental readings on its initial flight. The payloads were developed from kits during the workshop and can be used again by participants of the workshop on high-altitude balloon flights or sounding-rocket flights of the future.

At the workshop's conclusion, the student experiments were flown on a two-stage Terrier-Orion rocket, as described in Astronautix.com, to a 73-mile altitude.

The rocket then went back to Earth, enabling the payload to be recovered and returned to the students within hours from launch. Sounding rockets are small in size, suborbital rockets are used for scientific investigations.

Along with other RockOn! experiments teams at the workshop built, the rocket carried 11 custom-built RockSat experiments as well, designed by teams of students from 10 universities that had taken part in previous RockOn! workshops.

Over 50 students that took part in the RockSat experiments were at Wallops during both the RockOn! workshop and launch.

A similar report is shown on the World Today's YouTube video below: