On June 26th, 2009 at 5:30am EDT the RockOn/RockSat Terrier Improved Orion roared to life and sent its payloads to an altitude of greater than 117 km (72.7 miles)! The rocket reached Mach 1 in approximately 3.787 seconds, and the payload sections was successfully recovered and returned to Wallops Flight Facility by 9:30am EDT.

Congratulations to all RockSat teams on an excellent launch and for all of your hard work!

RockSat is a payload canister that provides a standard payload volume and weight for launch on a sounding rocket for a relatively low cost.  The RockSat payload canister is a modular system of cans designed for suborbital flights with Wallops Flight Facility’s (WFF) Sub-SEM ring assembly. The objective of the RockSat payload canister is to give customers a design envelope to build around that will allow easy integration to any WFF rocket using the Sub-SEM ring assembly. This standardized approach provides customers low cost access to space.   Payloads shall be student based with faculty and/or industry involvement only. The RockSat payload canister is not available to payloads that are profit related endeavors and/or industry research and development. Students must be actively engaged and involved.

The RockSat payload canister was successfully tested in June of 2008 when 5 RockSat payload canisters carried payloads to an altitude of greater than 40 miles on WFF’s improved Orion rocket. The second iteration of the RockOn workshop will take place on June 21-26, 2009. The selected RockSat payload canisters will fly on a Terrier-Orion with the RockSat payload canisters from the RockOn workshop. 

If you are interested in developing your own payload and launching it this coming June 2009, please take a look at the RockSat User's Guide and complete your Intent to Fly Form by September 8, 2008 at 4:00 PM.