"At t-minus 60 seconds before liftoff last Friday morning, Laura Peticolas could be seen on a Zoom call crossing her fingers on both hands. Peticolas, a Sonoma State University professor who is associate director of its STEM learning center, has for the past five years been managing an evolving team of students who built a miniature satellite, or CubeSat, along with undergraduates from Howard University and the University of New Hampshire."
"Their efforts culminated in a spectacular milestone at 10:44 a.m. Friday, when that satellite, slightly larger than a half-gallon carton of milk, was propelled into the outer reaches of Earth's atmosphere on a rocket that blasted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County. "Ignition," intoned a man in SpaceX mission control, after counting down from 10. "Engines full power, and liftoff. Go Falcon, go Transporter 15.""
Laura Peticolas led a multi-institution student team over five years to build a miniature CubeSat with undergraduates from Howard University and the University of New Hampshire. The palm-sized satellite launched at 10:44 a.m. from Vandenberg Space Force Base on SpaceX's Falcon 9 as part of the Transporter 15 mission that deployed 140 satellites. The CubeSat, slightly larger than a half-gallon carton of milk, will collect upper-atmosphere data in collaboration with NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP). Remote cameras showed deployment hardware minutes after liftoff. The launch followed multiple postponements since its originally scheduled date.
Read at The Mercury News
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