MEDIA ADVISORY: NASA rocket to launch UH Community College students’ experiment into space

VIDEO AND SOUND INCLUDED

University of Hawaiʻi
Contact:
Kelli Abe Trifonovitch, (808) 228-8108
Chief Communications Officer, UH Office of Communications
Posted: Aug 8, 2022

Project Imua team at work at NASA Wallops Flight Facility.
Project Imua team at work at NASA Wallops Flight Facility.
(from left) Caleb Yuen, Frank Bolanos, IV, Associate Professor Shidong Kan, Jared Estrada
(from left) Caleb Yuen, Frank Bolanos, IV, Associate Professor Shidong Kan, Jared Estrada

Link to video and sound (details below): https://bit.ly/3bHIob9

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 is scheduled for August 9, between 5:30–9 p.m. EDT (11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. HST)

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 August 9.

  • 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.

VIDEO: (TRT: 1:59)

BROLL:  

:00-1:35 Shots of project at NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia

SOUND: 

Frank Bolanos IV, Honolulu CC student, Project Imua (:16)

“I’m looking forward to launch because of all the hard work we’ve put into this project to really make sure it succeeds. There’s a lot of work that went into it and a lot of time and waiting and excitement. So to see it actually go up is going to be incredible.”

Caleb Yuen, Honolulu CC student, Project Imua (:05)

“I think the public needs to know that we’re still reaching the great beyond in space with science.”