CETA Participated in RockOn! Sounding Rocket Experiment

The College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture (CETA) participated in the NASA RockOn! 2023 Workshop this summer, with support from the NASA Connecticut Space Grant Consortium.

The RockOn! hands-on workshop taught participants how to create a sounding rocket experiment from scratch through activities over a five-day period, and then launched the payload into space on the sixth day of the workshop. It all took place at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, VA. Wallops Air Force Base provided the workshop's rocket and launch operations.

The workshop focused on building sounding rocket payloads. Teams of participants including students and faculty built their rocket payload from a provided kit. UHart's team consisted of Professor Enrico Obst of mechanical engineering, Avery Duprey, a senior in aerospace engineering, and Dillon Stan, a senior in computer/electrical engineering technology. The consortium grant fully funded their travel and participation.

The goal of the launch is to aid in the development of students' knowledge and practical experience to prepare them for technical and engineering aerospace opportunities. The workshop guided each participant in achieving a completed and working experiment, along with the confidence to work on future sounding rocket experiments with the RockSat-C and RockSat-X programs. Each experiment provided valuable scientific data, analyzed as part of the student-led science and engineering research.