Destination SPACE cultivates an interest in STEM education and careers by providing students with engaging hands-on remote sensing educational opportunities. The ThinSat Program, Destination SPACEâs year-long project for high schools students, is currently underway at Nesbitt Discovery Academy in Asheville, North Carolina. During this three-phase program, teams of five to six students form research questions regarding three layers of the atmosphere: the troposphere, stratosphere, and thermosphere. They answer these questions by designing payloads that they launch on low altitude weather balloons, high altitude weather balloons, and potentially on the second stage of an Orbital ATK Antares rocket. Each phase builds off the previous phase, and all of the material is designed to prepare students for their ThinSat launch.

Destination Space is made up of two programs: Satellite Week and ThinSat Program. Satellite Week takes place at the end of the summer and is a precursor to the ThinSat Program. In Satellite Week, students are introduced to satellite remote sensing and they design, build, and launch their own sensors on weather balloons. The ThinSat Program is run as an after school program and gives students a more in-depth understanding of remote sensing and engineering, and they launch their sensors on multiple weather balloons with the end goal of sending their ThinSats into orbit.