MEDIA ADVISORY: Launch of NASA rocket carrying UH Community College experiment postponed to Aug. 10

University of Hawaiʻi
Contact:
Kelli Abe Trifonovitch, (808) 228-8108
Chief Communications Officer, UH Office of Communications
Posted: Aug 9, 2022

Project Imua team at NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Project Imua team at NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

NOTE:  Launch has been rescheduled to Wednesday, Aug. 10 between 5:30–9 p.m. EDT (11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. HST)

WHAT: Launch of a 44-foot NASA sounding rocket carrying a scientific experiment designed and built by UH Community College students into space.

WHERE: NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia

WHEN: Launch had been scheduled for August 9, but has been rescheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 10 between 5:30–9 p.m. EDT (11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. HST), due to sea conditions for payload recovery.

WHO: The Project Imua Mission 10 team comprises students and staff from UH Community Colleges. 

  • Windward CC students designed and built a camphor-powered sublimation rocket that should be deployed at the peak of the NASA rocket’s flight—at approximately 91 miles altitude. 

  • The Honolulu CC team designed a camera system and inertial measurement unit devices to monitor the sublimation rocket’s motion.

WHY: Project Imua (which means to move forward in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi) provides students with real-world, project-based learning opportunities, including experimenting with high-power rocketry, and designing and fabricating small payloads for space flight.

HOW: Project Imua’s experiment is one of six developed by college and university teams across the nation that are being flown through the RockSat-X program, which gives students at post-secondary institutions the experience of building experiments for space flight.

OTHER FACTS:

  • There will be live coverage of the launch on the Wallops YouTube site.

  • UH Communications plans to send a video news release a few hours after the launch on Wednesday, August 10.

  • Mission 10 represents the fourth time that a UH Project Imua payload will be launched into outer space. The first Project Imua payload was launched from Wallops in 2015.

Photo caption:  (From left) Joe Ciotti, Quinn-Patrick O’Malley, Caleb Yuen, Frank Bolanos, IV, Jared Estrada, Shidong Kan