Since the Fall of 2017, UMBC students from the Mechanical Engineering Department working at the laboratory of Dr. Carlos Romero-Talamás, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering, have been collaborating with students from Capitol Technology University to design and build a sounding rocket payload to study atmospheric composition at high altitude.
On January 13, 2019 at 9:13 UT (4:13 EST), a rocket carrying this and six other payloads belonging to student groups from the US, Japan, and Norway, successfully launched from the Andøya Space Center in Norway, reaching an altitude of 174 km before falling back to the North Atlantic sea.
Data produced by this instrument will be analyzed at UMBC and CapTech to look for signals of sodium, iron, and other elements conjectured to be present at very high altitudes.
