Rhodes CubeSat

Our Proposal

    Our proposal has a primary educational focus and is aligned with NASA's Strategic Objective 3.3: "Inspire and Engage the Public in Aeronautics, Space, and Science." As a liberal arts college without an engineering program, Rhodes has limited opportunities for students to participate in technology-intensive educational experiences. The CubeSat program directly addresses this limitation by providing students with an exciting opportunity to engage in the “new space-age” created by CubeSats. Currently, 13 students are members of the Rhodes CubeSat team. In the last year, the team has accomplished the following objectives: (1) defined a mission and a payload (testing novel photovoltaic cells), (2) identified expert collaborators to support the mission (the Photovoltaic Materials and Devices Group at The University of Oklahoma and the Energy Device Section at The Aerospace Corporation), (3) developed a working ground station, (4) purchased a 1U engineering model from our satellite bus hardware provider (ISISpace), (5) started laboratorybased testing of the PV cell characterization hardware that will be used in- orbit for the mission, and (6) submitted this CSLI application. In total, we estimate that 30-50 students at Rhodes will directly participate as members of the CubeSat team over the next four years. Our goal is for onefourth of those to be non-STEM students. We expect to engage 10-15 students on the project during each academic year for academic credit, and 4-6 students each summer in paid internships at Rhodes and collaborating institutions. We actively recruit students from underrepresented groups (women and minorities) and also non-STEM students

    The educational focus has a secondary objective that involves science education outreach to high schools in Memphis, Tennessee, the location of Rhodes College. We propose to develop two hands-on outreach activities. The first activity is to help students understand PV cell technology and the role of our scientific mission to test novel PV cells in low earth orbit to advance this technology for use in space. The second activity will teach students about the physics of satellite orbits, including understanding Einstein’s concept of gravity as a curvature of space-time. The outreach activities will be conducted in close collaboration with the Rhodes chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS). SPS is a national organization with over 800 chapters at colleges and universities. Our chapter has received numerous awards for its science education outreach efforts and has been recognized as an outstanding chapter (top 10% nationally) for 22 consecutive years. Working with SPS, our CubeSat team will focus on outreach to high schools in our area to reach underrepresented groups in STEM. Memphis is part of the Shelby County School System, which is the largest school district in Tennessee with over 100,000 students, 91% of which belong to minority groups.