This summer, Dimitris Vassiliadis, professor at West Virginia University Department of Physics, and James Eakins, senior physics major, watched an experiment they built launch to an altitude of 73 miles on a NASA suborbital sounding rocket.

The two attended RockOn, a week-long student workshop hosted by NASA and the Colorado and Virginia Space Grant Consortia at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia that teaches faculty and students how to develop experiments or payloads for flight.

WVU’s participation in the workshop was part of a new, two-semester-long project in the department of physics called the WVU Sounding-Rocket Student Program that is funded by the WV Space Grant Consortium and invites undergraduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines to design, build and fly sophisticated payloads for a similar rocket launch in June 2010.

“WVU’s Sounding-Rocket Student Program provides the hands-on experience of building flight-worthy components, and fosters responsibility and teamwork of students from a large number of disciplines, like physics, mechanical, aerospace and electrical engineering, computer science, chemistry, geosciences, and many others,” Vassiliadis said. “Such a project is a great addition to a resume and can be useful for a wide spectrum of careers in industry, as well as government.”

At RockOn, Vassiliadis and Eakins built a payload that included useful instruments and cameras to measure the rocket acceleration, air pressure, and temperature, along with a Geiger counter used to register high-energy particles in the ionosphere. They plan to bring the skills, knowledge and experience obtained back to WVU and continue building experiments in WVU’s Sounding-Rocket Student Program with other interested students similar to the RockOn workshop. One future experiment involves a new X-ray detector to be developed by a WVU astrophysicist.

“Rockets span a broad range of altitudes, and provide a platform from which researchers can measure properties of the rarefied upper atmosphere and near-Earth space,” Vassiliadis said. “These experiments offer information that can help us understand weather and climate, conduct experiments under low-gravity conditions to develop new substances, and make solar and astrophysical observations outside the hazy Earth atmosphere.”

Nearly 100 university instructors and students from 21 states attended RockOn. Participants worked in three-person teams with students and faculty from universities across the country to build a payload from a hardware kit. Each of the fifteen teams prepared its own version of the payload, then helped integrate all of them into the rocket body.

Wallops Flight Facility provided the rocket and launch operations, and offered tours and briefings on sounding rocket environments. The program was organized and supported by the Colorado and the Virginia Space Grant Consortium with funding from NASA Education.

Students interested in WVU’s Sounding-Rocket Student Program are invited to attend an informational session on Friday, Sept. 11 at 2:30 p.m. in Hodges Hall Room 259. The program is open to all students with emphasis on those pursuing a STEM major. Eligible students should maintain a high grade-point-average (GPA) and have related experience in building components and/or writing software.

To learn more about WVU’s Sounding-Rocket Student Program, visit http://ulysses.phys.wvu.edu/~dimitris/research/suborbital/index.htm.

For more information, contact Dimitris Vassiliadis, research associate professor in the department of physics, at (304) 293- 1824 ext. 33463 or Dimitris.Vassiliadis@mail.wvu.edu.

-WVU-

lp/9/8/09

CONTACT: Rebecca Herod, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
304-293-7405, ext. 5251, Rebecca.Herod@mail.wvu.edu