Rocket science: SVSU team rocks on with NASA

July 21, 2026

Rocket science: SVSU team rocks on with NASA

A small contingent from Saginaw Valley State University recently sent an experiment into space as the culmination of a weeklong workshop at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

John Potts, SVSU's physics laboratory technician and model rocket enthusiast, along with mechanical engineering major Lucas Colpaert and physics major Kayla Newson, composed one of 24 three-person teams selected for the NASA RockOn workshop, which took place in June.

"Opportunities like the RockOn workshop provide students with educational experiences that expand their thinking and deepen their understanding of subject matter they cover in regular coursework," Potts said. "They also fan the flames of students' passions and introduce them to career paths they might not have considered."

During the workshop, each participating team - comprising a faculty member and two students - built a science payload that was launched on a sounding rocket and gathered data during the rocket flight. The workshop guided the teams through the experiment process: concept, design, build, integration, flight and analysis.

Sounding rockets do not orbit Earth. Rather, they fly from 50 to 120 miles high, gathering data, then parachute back to Earth.

During the first seven days of the workshop, the teams worked on assembling their experiments, which consisted of instruments to measure acceleration, temperature, pressure, radiation, humidity and position. Assembly involved soldering sensitive components to a shield board and mounting the shield board, a Geiger counter, an Arduino microcontroller and batteries to an acrylic disk, testing each step as it was completed. Then all of the experiments were loaded onto the sounding rocket.

The payoff came on the eighth day, when the workshop participants witnessed the 5:30 a.m. launch of the rocket into the atmosphere, roughly 115 miles above the Earth. About 12 minutes later, the rocket splashed down in the Atlantic, 75 miles off-shore, where it was retrieved and brought back to the facility so the experiments could be analyzed. The trio returned to SVSU with their experiment and the data it collected on its brief flight.
More importantly, they came back with more ideas about how to apply workshop learnings into the instructional experience.

Providing students with experiential learning opportunities like the RockOn workshop aligns with one of SVSU's strategic priorities.
"Here in the physics department, we really try to help our students get experiences that they're not going to get at a big university," Potts said.
For the students, the RockOn workshop provided more than lessons in building an experiment.

"Being able to talk to NASA employees and get advice from them - that itself was just as valuable as anything we learned from the actual workshop," Newson said.
Colpaert agreed. "This was amazing," he said. "If I have the opportunity to work on rockets again in the future, I will reach for that more."