Proposal to NASA Office of Education For NASA Space Grant Sounding Rocket Payload Development and Launch Workshop at Wallops Flight Facility Submitted to Dr. Joyce Winterton, July 27, 2007 Contacts: Mary Sandy, Virginia Space Grant Consortium, 757/766-5210; msandy@odu.edu; Chris Koehler, Colorado Space Grant Consortium, Koehler@Colorado.edu; 303/492-4750; John Campbell, Director, NASA Wallops Flight Facility, 757.824-1202, john.h.campbell@nasa.gov; Philip Eberspeaker, Chief, Sounding Rocket Program, NASA Wallops Flight Facility, 757/824-2202, philip.j.eberspeaker@nasa.gov Introduction The NASA Wallops Flight Facility has agreed to partner with the Colorado and Virginia Space Grant Programs with participation from the National Space Grant network to develop and host a new national Space Grant workshop for faculty and students that will provide participants with hands-on training for sounding rocket payload development and launch experience. This workshop, initially titled RocketSat Hands-On Workshop (RockOn), will be modeled on the very successful Space Grant workshop -- Starting Student Space Hardware Programs -- that has been held for five years in Boulder, Colorado. The first workshop would take place in summer 2008. The workshop will use a standardized payload kit to teach faculty and student teams how to develop sounding rocket payloads and immerse them in a launch and data retrieval and reduction experience. The participants will subsequently integrate what they have learned into engineering design and other courses at their universities and return with subsequent payloads for future launches at Wallops. The workshop will have long-term impact on building faculty, student and university capabilities to undertake sounding rocket experiments. The partners envision a series of annual workshops, each including a launch opportunity that will carry both workshop participant experiments and new research experiments developed by the previous year s participants. Costs for subsequent flights will help to defray launch support costs after the first year of the workshop. The Colorado and Virginia Space Grant Consortia are asking NASA s Office of Education for support of this first workshop in June 2008 which will be heavily leveraged (2.36 to 1) by contributions from NASA Wallops, the Colorado and Virginia Space Grants, and workshop participant fees. The RockOn Workshop is fully aligned with the NASA Education Portfolio Strategic Framework Outcome 1 - Contribute to the development of the STEM workforce. It specifically supports the following objectives: 1.2 by providing NASA competency-building education and research opportunities to develop qualified undergraduate and graduate students who are prepared for employment in STEM disciplines at NASA, in industry, and in higher education. 1
1.3 by providing opportunities for groups of post-secondary students to engage in authentic, NASA related, mission-based R&D activities 1.4 by providing design and project related course resources for integration into STEM disciplines 1.5 by improving the ability for targeted institutions to compete for NASA research and development work. Background Space Grant Consortia across the nation have been seeking ways to engage students in real aerospace missions. Access to Space for students is extremely limited and, when it is available, prohibitively expensive. The Space Grant network has been working together to build capabilities through collaborative missions and national workshops. Some Consortia have developed balloon and or rocket-based missions, Shuttle and Space Station-based initiatives, air-borne sensors or cube sat-type projects but such efforts have been limited. Space Grant Directors have indicated a strong interest in undertaking sounding rocket missions because they offer affordable access to space for student developed payloads as well as for University research. NASA Wallops has been working with universities for sounding rocket missions and wants to expand such opportunities through the National Space Grant network. The Virginia Space Grant and NASA Wallops, a VSGC member, have been collaborating on student sounding rocket missions and discussing ways to offer the wonderful resources at Wallops to other Space Grant universities across the country. The Colorado and Pennsylvania Space Grants have also actively participated in Wallops Sounding Rocket launches. The Space Grant network has indicated a strong desire to have access to the launch opportunities available at NASA Wallops. Indeed, the Space Grant network is already working with the Balloon Project Office at NASA Wallops through the High Altitude Student Platform, which is a Space Grant project led by the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium. We would like to now work with NASA Wallops to build an affordable access program for Sounding Rocket missions and provide the training needed for universities to participate. A key element in building Space Grant capabilities to undertake student aerospace mission is the Starting Student Space Hardware Programs Hands-On workshop. This workshop, which was led by Chris Koehler, will serve as a model upon which we will build the RockOn workshop. Since 2002, a total of 283 college educators, high school teachers, and students have participated in the five national hands-on workshops focused on ballooning and BalloonSats. Participants have developed over 80 new hands-on programs around the nation that have directly engaged and educated over 9,500 students. This workshop has been successful, in part, because participants build, test, and launch an 2
actual payload to 100,000 feet during the three-day workshop. In addition, the registration cost is under $800 and participants take home over $200 in reusable hardware. Also, the workshop participants have fun and tell others about the experience. This workshop will continue as needed for many years to come but many past participants who have now started their own ballooning and BalloonSat programs are looking for the next and more challenging step for their students. RockOn will build on this workshop s highly leveraged approach. RockOn Concept The Colorado and Virginia Space Grant Directors met with leadership from NASA Wallops on July 17, 2007. Together we discussed the concept for this new hands-on workshop. The workshop would be held over a six-day period at the Wallops Flight Facility. Workshop recruitment will target faculty who will be encouraged to bring a graduate or undergraduate student participant who can assist with subsequent development of follow-on university payloads. Teams of three to five people will build an actual sounding rocket payload during the first three days of the workshop and receive mission-related training. This payload would be built from a kit that has been in development by students of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium since February 2006. The kit will be modified as required by NASA Wallops. Participants of the RockOn workshop would take home the sounding rocket payload (valued at $600) built during the workshop to be reused as a teaching tool or parts for their next payload. On day four, Wallops personnel and workshop participants will integrate the payloads to an Orion sounding rocket. The sounding rocket will launch on day five with a weather day option on day six. The Orion sounding rocket and workshop payloads will be recovered and returned to the participants before they leave the workshop. Time not devoted to payload development will be spent on the basics of rocket science, mission management, and facility tours and experiences. The Colorado and Virginia Space Grant consortia staff will lead the participants through the build and testing of their workshop payloads. The Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortia has also expressed interest in teaching portions of this workshop. During the workshop, Wallops personnel will inform participants about the sounding rocket payload configurations that are offered at the Wallops facility. This will equip the participants with the information necessary to start more advanced sounding rocket payloads at their home institutions. The workshop will also serve as the impetus for Wallops to develop a reusable payload module that can accommodate multiple university experiments and offer affordable access to universities for future missions. The long-term goal for the RockOn workshop is that participants return to Wallops with more advanced student sounding rocket payloads that will be integrated with other experiments and launched. The RockOn workshop will set in motion a series of events that will make Wallops the place for students to access sub-orbital altitudes. It is anticipated that workshops will continue over a multi-year period and that more advanced student experiments might be flown as part of the workshop launch and/or separate launch opportunities. Future workshops can capitalize on the reusable payload 3
module built for the first RockOn workshop. Purchased flight opportunities can fly as part of future workshop launches, helping subsidize subsequent workshop launch costs. Impacts It is estimated that 30 to 50 people from across the US will participate in the first workshop and of those participants, the majority will be college and university professors. Participants will be encouraged to bring with them a key undergraduate or graduate student to help implement the RocketSat concept at their home institution. It is estimated that over 500 hundred students will be directly engaged in new programs after the participants from the first workshop return to their home institutions and begin their new sounding rocket programs. It is estimated that 10 to 15 Space Grant consortia will be represented at the first workshop. This workshop will be a strong and meaningful collaboration with the National Space Grant Program and the Wallops Flight Facility. As a result of this workshop, Wallops will complete a set of new sounding rocket modules for different types and sizes of sounding rocket payloads. This will be significant and important step in providing students reliable access to space. This workshop will get national attention inside NASA and with the general public as one significant way that NASA is preparing the next workforce of engineers and scientists. Evaluation Workshop participants (both faculty and student) will complete formal assessments of the workshop experience at the conclusion of the workshop and will be resurveyed in spring of the following year for impacts on coursework, subsequent rocket activities and on individuals, including self assessment of impacts on education, discipline majors and career plans. For subsequent launch activities we will continue to track how the faculty and students build upon the workshop experience with subsequent payloads and course projects/curriculum. The longitudinal surveys will continue over the life of the project and at least one year past the funded period. Data will be reported in the Space Grant CMIS report and provided separately to appropriate NASA contacts. Request The Colorado and Virginia Space Grant consortia are requesting that NASA s Office of Education help support the RockOn Workshop for the first year to make the first workshop a reality and to underwrite the costs of developing the reusable payload model and a portion of the launch costs. We are requesting Office of Education funding in the amount of $123,540, which will be leveraged by $292,090 in other support ($2.36 for each dollar contributed by the NASA Office of Education. Participants of the RockOn Workshop will pay a registration fee similar to the BalloonSat workshop. This fee will cover the costs of the food, RocketSat kit hardware, and other logistical items needed to facilitate the workshop. It is estimated that the registration fee would be around $1,000 per participant to cover the expenses for this six-day workshop, a fee we believe to be reasonable for Space Grant underwriting. Participants will also have to cover their own lodging, transportation and dinner costs in addition to the workshop fee. The full cost for 4
a Sounding Rocket Mission is $307,000. Wallops Flight Facility has generously agreed to contribute $232,000 and to provide the launch and related support costs for $75,000. This included the development of the reusable payload module. While we could build these costs into the registration fee (requiring a fee of more than $3,000 per participant based on 40 people at the workshop), it would make the fee very difficult for most participants and associated sponsoring Space Grant Consortia to cover. In addition, the Colorado and Virginia Space Grant Consortia are willing to contribute much of the staff and student time needed to plan and facilitate this workshop but it would be helpful if NASA s Office of Education could cover $20K of this time. A detailed budget estimate is attached. The Colorado and Virginia Space Grant Consortia would like to announce the workshop dates and registration website at the National Space Grant Meeting in Las Cruces, New Mexico on October 29, 2007. We would need a commitment by NASA s Office of Education by September 13, 2007 in order to begin preparations for this workshop. Budget (attached) Funding is requested to be awarded to the Virginia Space Grant Consortium through its Space Grant award and the VSGC will make subawards will to the Colorado Space Grant Consortium and NASA Wallops Flight Facility. The Virginia Space Grant Consortium has a Space Act Agreement in place with NASA Wallops that will facilitate the transfer of funds. The Virginia Space Grant Consortium is an affiliate of the Old Dominion University Research Foundation, which acts as its fiscal agent. 5