Project IMUA Team’s First-Ever UHCC-Student- Built Payload Launch

Project Imua (to move forward in Hawaiian) is a joint faculty-student enterprise of four campuses within the University of Hawai‘i Community College system (Honolulu, Kapi‘olani, Kaua‘i and Windward) dedicated to designing, fabricating, and testing small payloads for launch into space. This multi-campus project is funded by a two-year $500,000 grant awarded to the Hawai‘i Space Grant Consortium under the NASA Space Grant Competitive Opportunity for Partnerships with Community Colleges and Technical Schools. This grant includes $200,000 in student internships. Additional technical assistance is provided by Hawai‘i Space Flight Laboratory resources and personnel. The Project Imua team, now completing their first year, watched as their first-ever UHCC-student-built payload was launched into space from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility around midnight Hawai‘i time. Watch the launch and see more photos and information at UH News. After its sub-orbital flight, the Project Imua payload (an ultraviolet spectrometer for measuring solar irradiance above the atmosphere) will be retrieved and the team will begin looking at their data.

National news coverage includes Space Daily and Education News.