Rock-Sat

The RockSat Program is starting another year of opportunities for students to build their own sounding rocket payloads. For the past two years, Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) has made sub-orbital opportunities available to the RockSat-C program. The RockSat-C program, out of Colorado Space Grant Consortium (COSGC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, provides a standard interface to the Terrier-Improved Orion launch vehicle. This interface is called the RockSat Payload Canister. In addition to this year’s RockSat-C program, WFF and COSGC will begin a new, more advanced RockSat-X program for those wanting to push their rocket programs to new extremes. RockSat-C will launch on 23 June 2011, and RockSat-X will launch on 4 August 2011.

RockSat-C and X both start in September with the Intent to Fly Form (IFF) and Notice of Intent (NOI), respectively. All educational institutions are welcome to participate, and industry partnership is encouraged. Please feel free to pass this opportunity along to colleagues and fellow students! More information can be found in the attached flyers or on the websites. More information on each program is provided following the contact information and URLs for each program:

Emily Logan—RockSat-C Program Manager
rocksatprogram@gmail.com spacegrant.colorado.edu/rocksatc

Shawn Carroll—RockSat-X Program Manager
rocksatx@gmail.com spacegrant.colorado.edu/rocksatx

The RockSat-C program is centered on a standard payload canister that provides a simple interface between the payload and the rocket structure. The rocket launches from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. The RockSat-C Program has students compete for a spot on the launch vehicle through a series of design reviews to develop their payload. The RockSat-C program is a low-cost launch opportunity that allows the participants to gain hands-on experience developing scientific payloads. The program started 3 years ago with a single student designed payload researching the AirCore concept, with support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Since the C program began in 2009, twenty student-designed, university payloads have flown. Payloads will be recovered and returned to Wallops for participants to extract data and take home.

RockSat-X pushes the RockSat-C concept to new extremes by providing participants with full access to the space environment, more on-flight resources, and a less restrictive design space (deployables). RockSat-X will provide participants with a standard deck plate that the experiment must mount to. Interested institutions will follow a similar, competitive design process used for RockSat-C, which will culminate with final selections in January. Selected participants will continue the engineering process through June when participants will travel to Wallops to put their payloads through environmental testing. Participants will then have one month to resolve issues and will return in August to launch their payloads to an estimated 100 mile apogee. In addition to being exposed to the space environment, payloads will be provided with power from the rocket and a live telemetry feed for real-time data acquisition. These amenities allow experimenters to focus more on the science and leave power and data handling to the experts at Wallops. Recovery of payloads is planned but cannot be guaranteed.

Thanks, and we look forward to working with you!

Chris Koehler
Chair, National Council of Space Grant Directors
Director, Colorado Space Grant Consortium
University of Colorado at Boulder
koehler@colorado.edu
303-492-4750 (office)

Emily Logan
RockSat-C Program Manager
rocksatprogram@gmail.com
720-341-3552

Shawn Carroll
RockSat-X Program Manager
rocksatx@gmail.com
720-234-4902