Since early last year students in Bishop O'Connell High School's Engineering Club have been preparing to launch an experiment into space...and Wednesday, April 17, 2019 is their big day!
Over the past year, they've assembled and coded small sensor boards using components known as XinaBox. Once they were happy with their experiment pieces, they used low-altitude balloon tests to hone their ability to collect and analyze data from this device.
Since late last fall, their fully tested experiment has been loaded into a ThinSat model bus, which approximates the size of a slice of bread. They've named their ThinSat project "DJOSpaceToast," as this little satellite will be released into an Extreme Low-Earth Orbit (ELEO), and after providing the O'Connell mission team with important data for several days, it will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up.
How will this DJO Space Toast get into orbit in the first place? It is one of several school projects that are being launched into space as part of the payload on the NG-11 rocket launch from NASA's Wallops Island facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore. The NG-11 is a resupply mission for the International Space Station, but will deploy ThinSats, including O'Connell's, during the second stage of the Antares rocket.
Seven of O'Connell's student mission leaders will be in attendance at the rocket launch. They've been invited for a morning VIP tour of the launch facility, and they will stay after the 4:46 p.m. planned launch time to work with personnel from Virginia Space to view the first data coming in from their components. Back at O'Connell, larger groups of students will be able to analyze both the science (climate data) and the engineering data (evaluating the efficiency and functioning of the hardware and payload on DJO Space Toast's maiden voyage).
"It is important to test the new XinaBox chips as well as the ThinSat hardware itself so that improvements can be made in the future so other people can use them," said student mission leader Will Rimicci.
"When our satellite launches, I will really see how much I've been able to grow, working with this team," said another team leader, Aidan O'Donovan. "I'm going to be so proud of our group and what we've accomplished."
Melissa Pore, faculty advisor and engineering teacher at Bishop O'Connell, is just as excited as the students. "We are so lucky to have this opportunity to build, test, and launch our very own satellite into orbit," she said. "This is the dream of many, reached by few, but certainly a reality here at O'Connell!"
Special thanks to VA Space and Northrop Grumman for their support of this project.
You can follow information about the April 17 launch on Twitter by following @melissapore or @oconnellhs.