Stevens Students Launch Hands-On Research with NASA in Rocket Program

Stevens Institute of Technology students are contributing to the newest aerospace research through a NASA-sponsored rocket experiment — one that could help advance planetary exploration.

NASA’s annual RockSat-C program invites college students to compete to design and build a payload of research-related equipment for a rocket to conduct scientific experiments in space.

The 2024-25 Stevens NASA RockSat-C team included (from left): Nerissa Lundquist ’25, Daniel Ahn ’27, Abhi Prajapati ’26, Anthony Ford ’25, Samuel Strassburger ’26, Joseph Miles, Rene Bieluh ’27, Aidan Kinney ’25, and Joseph Morsillo ’27

Under the guidance of Joseph Miles, teaching associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the team spends an academic year designing, developing, constructing and launching a payload (the load carried by a spacecraft) on a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket. They meet weekly in the campus laboratories and attend formal reviews with NASA over Zoom. Working in interdisciplinary sub-teams, they tackle mechanical design, software development and electronics.

The culmination takes the students to NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia in June to join hundreds of peers and NASA engineers in a 10-day experience highlighted by seeing their payload lift off in the research rocket.

For the past 15 years, Miles has mentored students in conducting experiments ranging from fiber optic gyroscopes to pressure sensors and carbon dioxide detectors. Some years yielded working data; others offered tough lessons in systems engineering. Students have encountered software delays, signal calibration errors and other challenges, but each attempt adds to the team’s knowledge and experience.

“It’s become more than just a summer program,” said Miles, who also coordinates the New Jersey Space Grant Consortium, NASA’s higher education outreach in the state. “It’s a launchpad for students to experience aerospace firsthand as they work on the electronics, mechanics and software. The payload is just nine inches in diameter and six inches tall, but it’s packed with design, testing and student energy.”

A trajectory of learning

Since 2023, the Stevens teams have been working to collect atmospheric gas samples at high speeds and predetermined time intervals.

Inspired by his own Venus mission work, Jason Rabinovitch, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, pitched the project to the students. The Stevens RockSat-C team’s payload, dubbed Atmospheric Inert AIR Retrieval, is motivated by Rabinovitch’s work supporting a mission concept that would fly a probe through the upper atmosphere of Venus to bring gas samples back to Earth.

“Even students not going into a career in aerospace tell me this was the most valuable project on their resume,” said Joseph Miles. “It shows employers they can work on a real engineering challenge with a real customer with real clout: NASA.”

"Noble gases such as helium, neon and argon tell us a lot about how a planet formed and changed over time,” Rabinovitch noted, “but sampling gas at hypersonic speeds through a system can unintentionally change the composition of what’s collected. I challenged the students to build a system that could acquire atmospheric gases while the rocket travels at very high speeds, as a stepping stone to demonstrate future sampling technologies for space missions.”

Their experiment includes a system of pressure sensors and precision-timed valves that direct atmospheric gas into three collection chambers. After recovery, the samples can help determine how high-speed, rapid compression and expansion affect the collected elements. It's a complex design integrating mechanical, electrical and software components to ensure the payload works with the rocket, and it all has to perform under real-world constraints. And each year, the student team advances the project further.

“RockSat-C has enthralled me with the process of creating reliable, fault-tolerant systems while also making the program at Stevens more structured and effective,” said Anthony Ford ’25, who earned his bachelor’s degree in software engineering and led the software and electrical team for three years. “I’m 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.”

Next year’s team has already started planning improvements, including leak mitigation and more robust data acquisition. While the project’s ultimate goal of contributing to a Venus mission remains years away, the value for students is immediate.

“It’s real, it’s interdisciplinary, and it’s challenging,” Miles said. “It sparks a passion for space.”