A small cube of South Jersey-built technology may be orbiting the Earth by 2018.
Sangho Shin, a Rowan University engineering professor, nearly jumped out of his desk chair last week when NASA replied to his email.
Shin has been with Rowan just six months. In that time, he hatched his plan to launch a compact “memristor” into orbit that could lift Rowan into a new realm of scientific work.
The university would be the first institution or agency in New Jersey chosen by NASA to fly equipment as auxiliary payloads aboard Venture Class Launch Services rockets.
Rowan is in elite company in the seventh round of NASA-endorsed projects in the CubeSat, or nanosatellite program. The Glassboro university is among 20 agencies selected, including MIT, NASA’s Ames and Langley research centers, and California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the Mars Rover.
Before Rowan’s MemSat cube is launched, a team of four South Jersey engineering professors and countless undergrads in the College of Engineering must build the 4-inch by 4-inch cube satellite, meeting NASA’s next set of rigorous standards before a 2018 launch. The prototype could be complete by the end of the summer.