Missouri S&T student-designed satellite launches on SpaceX rocket

A satellite designed by a Missouri S&T student group launched into space Monday afternoon on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.

The Transporter-10 mission had a targeted liftoff time of 4:05 p.m. Monday. The launch was streamed at spacex.com. 

Missouri S&T students first began working on the NASA-funded project in 2016. Several students and alumni have played a crucial role in the project.

A group of about 19 people traveled to California for the launch, including Emily Doddemeade, the project's manager and a senior in aerospace engineering at Missouri S&T.

"As we saw [the satellite] go up, everyone went crazy. It was so exciting," Doddemeade said. "And it was an incredible experience to watch something we've worked so hard on get put into space like that."

The satellite initiative is referred to as the Multi-Mode Mission. Drake Beaman, a junior majoring in aerospace engineering and the project's chief engineer, said the small, cube-shaped satellite will test an experimental thruster that was developed in the Missouri S&T Advanced Plasma Lab.

"It's an incredible feeling to have something that I know that I personally worked on, and I worked with a team on, to have in space, it's an ecstatic feeling," Beaman said. 

The propulsion system will include both chemical and electric components and also be fed a liquid propellent, Beaman said. The thruster will be fired multiple times in space for 30-second bursts.

Doddemeade said they won't hear anything from the satellite until seven days after deployment.

The satellite was delivered to the Firefly Aerospace facility in Austin, Texas, in January, where it was loaded into a deployer. Then, the satellite was transferred to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, where it was integrated into the Falcon 9 rocket.