Stevens students are conducting aerospace research vital for a mission to Venus through NASA’s RockSat-C program. Teams of college students spend a year designing and building a payload of research equipment that will go aboard a rocket to conduct scientific experiments in space.
Led by teaching associate professor Joseph Miles from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the team designs, builds, tests, redesigns, rebuilds, and retests a payload for a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket. Sometimes called a research rocket, it carries instruments designed to take measurements and perform scientific tests during short flights which typically leave the atmosphere for several minutes before returning. While the launch is exciting, the real value is found in the process leading up to the big day. Some students claimed it was more involved than their senior design projects, and Miles described it as a “volunteer project with the time commitment of a 4-credit course.” Last year’s team of fifteen students met weekly in campus laboratories and monthly with NASA over Zoom. They were subjected to six design reviews, the same design review process that NASA engineers go through.
The current iteration of RockSat-C at Stevens began in 2023 when assistant professor Jason Rabinovitch from the Department of Mechanical Engineering presented the project to students based on his idea of sending a probe through Venus’ upper atmosphere to collect gas samples. Dean Siva Thangam is responsible for sponsoring the project. “Sampling gas at hypersonic speeds through a system can unintentionally change the composition of what’s collected,” Rabinovitch mentions. To solve this, the team is aiming for 2026 to develop a payload capable of obtaining atmospheric gas samples at predetermined time intervals while going faster than the speed of sound. He frames this as “a stepping stone to demonstrate future sampling technologies for space missions.” Referred to as Atmospheric Inert AIR Retrieval, or AIR, the payload will feature pressure sensors and valves used to flow atmospheric air into three sample tanks. The valves combined with a venting system will ensure that every tank is filled to max capacity and all samples are unique. Once they are retrieved, the samples will be studied with the goal of improving the models for the planned Venus mission.
The yearly rocket launch in June at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia comes after a long and arduous journey. Teams go through a design phase from late August to mid-November, after which NASA narrows down the pool to the 10 schools that will have a spot on the rocket at the end of the year. After passing this, the team will get to construct their payload for the next seven months until mid-June. The level of dedication students have shown to the project goes as far as coming to campus during winter break, spring break, and after finals. Any extra time spent is valuable for the team, as working with space is beyond the scope of almost everyone’s previous experience. Miles further explains how “the students learn that space is a harsh environment. They find out that one can have yearlong plans go wrong and then must figure out what to do during the next cycle.” Rarely does everything work perfectly. In 2024, NASA connected the wire lead from another experiment to the Stevens team’s experiment, resulting in data being collected at the wrong time intervals. This year, there was a leak that triggered a safety feature preventing the entire rocket from being de-pressurized, however, it also limited the data the team collected.
Complications are an unavoidable aspect of conducting unique aerospace research. These challenges push the team further while building students’ knowledge and experience, helping them advance the project closer to its goal than it has ever been. Project manager and software and electrical team lead for the last two years, Anthony Ford ‘25, is “confident that, with the foundation we’ve built, future teams are in a position to continue to build well-thought-out and functional payloads and overcome challenges.” Beyond the work, RockSat is an opportunity for students to witness amazing experiences and meet special people. Students fondly remember the late nights in the lab and the time they shared. “You have to wake up at 4 AM and head over. Then you stand there for an hour in the dark on the base, watching the sun rise and the timer count down. Launch happens so fast, and is honestly louder than I expected. It was amazing knowing that all the work we did paid off at that moment,” Nerissa Lundquist ‘25, part of the programming team for the past two years, recalls launch day in June.
As of September 2025, NASA is merging RockSat-C with the more challenging RockSat-X program. The payload will now be exposed to space, re-entry heat, and seawater. Next year’s team is already preparing for these obstacles while making improvements based on this year’s results.
