Community college students from the University of Hawaiʻi got to see the rocket that will carry their Project Imua scientific payload into space on the launchpad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Their tour of NASA on August 10 also included stops at the balloon research and development laboratory, a facility for rocket fabrication and mission control.
On Tuesday, August 11, 2015 (weather permitting), the rocket carrying Project Imua’s payload will be launched from Wallops into suborbital flight. Thundershowers are forecast for Tuesday and may push the launch to Wednesday, August 12, 2015. The UH Community College team was the only community college whose payload was selected for this launch.
“I’m excited,” said Kauaʻi Community College student Nick Herrmann. “The UV spectrometer payload that me and my team have been working on for the past year is on-board this rocket. And it’s just really cool to think that it’s getting so close to taking its journey into space.”
“The University of Hawaiʻi has done such a wonderful job of introducing us and of allowing us to be a part of this project based learning experience,” added Windward Community College student Madori Rumpungworn. “It’s not something that you learn in a classroom. It’s practice before theory.”
View more Project Imua photos on the University of Hawaiʻi Flickr site.
About Project Imua
Project Imua is a two-year collaboration between students and faculty at four University of Hawaiʻi community colleges.
The UH Community College students are part of a collaboration known as Project Imua (Hawaiian for “to move forward”). Comprised of four UH Community College campuses, Project Imua involves a joint faculty-student enterprise for designing, fabricating and testing payloads.
More Project Imua news
- ““Project Imua takes education out of this atmosphere” – July 16, 2015
- “Project Imua payload tested at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility” – June 26, 2015
- “Project by UH Community College students space bound” – June 12, 2015
—By Kelli Trifonovitch
