UToledo, Partners to Launch Satellite Into Space Aboard SpaceX Rocket

UToledo, Partners to Launch Satellite Into Space Aboard SpaceX Rocket

A Rocket-built satellite is launching into space Sunday, March 29.

The University of Toledo is one of six regional universities that designed a satellite scheduled to launch into orbit aboard a SpaceX Transporter-16 rideshare mission on the morning of Sunday, March 29.

The launch is the culmination of the first phase of Dream Big, an educational initiative under the nonprofit NearSpace Education. It's also the conclusion of months dedicated to designing and programming - and trial and error - for UToledo's Md Faisal Karim.

"It's honestly a mix of excitement and disbelief," said Karim, a master's student in electrical engineering who collaborated on the project with Dr. Kevin Czajkowski, Dr. Olawale "Femi" Oluwafemi and students from three high schools in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan. "When you realize that something you helped wire, program and test will actually be orbiting Earth, it's hard to put into words. You feel proud, nervous and excited all at once.

"It's a bit nerve-wracking too, but in the best way possible," Karim continued. "To know that our payload is going to provide real data that could potentially help us learn more about the environment is incredible."

NearSpace Education invited six university partners in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio to collaborate with area high school students to design and build satellites under Dream Big beginning in 2024. Czajkowski, a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning, brought his expertise in remote sensing to the local effort, which resulted in a satellite designed to collect spectral and temperature data to study atmospheric composition, environmental changes and even agricultural conditions from outer space.

It adapts NASA's Science and Technology Education for Land/Life Assessment (STELLA), a low-cost spectrometer designed for hands-on, educational experiences.

Nearly a dozen students from Toledo Technology Academy, Crestwood High School and Stockbridge Junior/Senior High School contributed to the project. In twice-weekly virtual meetings, they learned the ins and outs of satellites, the instruments scientists attach to them and what we can learn from the data they relay before testing their ideas on weather balloons launched from the grounds of Defiance Elementary School in early May.

"The high school students were very involved with the development of our satellite," Czajkowski said. "Then we ultimately had a couple of our UToledo students actually build it."

Enter Karim, one of more than a dozen undergraduate and graduate students who collaborated with the teenagers under the direction of Czajkowski and Oluwafemi, who graduated with a doctorate in Spatially Integrated Social Sciences in December. Karim took the lead on translating the team's work into a single payload - not necessarily a simple task, as he discovered during repeat trips this fall to NearSpace Launch in Upland, Indiana.

NearSpace Launch is the aerospace company affiliated with NearSpace Education. It produces small, affordable satellite equipment that each partner institution used to create the unique payloads that will launch together on Sunday.

"We had to make sure our payload could communicate successfully with the ThinSat emulator, and that every component from sensors to power systems to communication worked perfectly together in a space smaller than a tissue box," Karim said. "There were moments of frustration when things didn't work as expected, but when we finally saw our payload sending data successfully through the emulator, it felt incredible."

The team is hoping for a smooth launch that allows them to begin receiving data from their satellite as early as an hour after liftoff. They expect the information beamed back to Earth to offer new insights into topics ranging from urban heat islands to harmful algal blooms.

Czajkowski said he plans to utilize the data this semester in his course Digital Image Analysis.

"We already have test data from the weather balloon launch, so students will begin looking at that," he said. "Then once the new data comes in, they'll learn how to process it."