New Jersey Space Grant Team Launches with Colorado Space Grant RockSat
A multidisciplinary team of NJIT students from the Ying Wu College of Computing (YWCC) and Newark College of Engineering (NCE) Rocketry Club made history as participants in NJIT’s first team to launch in NASA’s RockSat Program. With their A.R.R.O.W. Mission (Aerospace Retrieval and Re-Entry Observation Workstation) NJIT’s team successfully qualified, integrated, launched, and captured data at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility. This milestone marks the first time a student-designed payload from NJIT reached outer space, putting NJIT on the map as a rookie club achieving instant success.
Under the advice of Dr. Hyomin Kim (Associate Professor, Department of Physics), YWCC junior Abdul Azeez Shaik (Computer Science Lead), along with NCE mechanical engineering majors Luka Stulic (Mechanical/Instrumentation Lead), Dariel Torres (Project Manager), Carlos J. Munoz (Project Manager) and Sayed Rahimi ( Mechanical/Design Lead), and electrical engineering major Nathanael Gunawan (Electrical Lead) had the distinctive opportunity to have their A.R.R.O.W. project accepted and fully launched through the highly competitive RockSat program, which is not only a first for NJIT but uncommon among universities who either are down-selected or do not meet NASA’s flight requirements pending a series of strenuous review periods during their initial attempt to earn a place on the sounding rocket.
“To reach launch at all is itself a real outcome, not a formality,” said Shaik.
The RockSat program is a competitive collegiate sounding rocket initiative managed by the Colorado Space Grant Consortium in partnership with the NASA Sounding Rocket Program Office (SRPO) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Students progress from RockOn, an entry-level introduction to building flight hardware up to RockSat, where teams design, build, test, integrate, and fly an original scientific or technology payload on a real NASA sounding rocket under the same review standards used for professional missions.
Read the full article on news.njit.edu
Author Credit: Michael Giorgio
Image Credit: NJIT News
Original Post Date: 9.28.26