Engaging Hispanic Students, Latinx Students, and their Peers in the 3U3 CubeSat Project

The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) Student Collaboration (StC) Project is led by the University of New Hampshire in collaboration with Sonoma State University (SSU), a Hispanic Serving Institution, and Howard University, a Historically Black College. StC involves students at these three universities in designing, building, testing, calibrating and delivering to NASA for launch at least one CubeSat with at least one student-built instrument. The CubeSat effort is named 3U3 to represent the size of the 3U CubeSat, the collaboration between the 3 Universities, and our 3 goals to 1. Understand upwelling of the oxygen in the cusp, 2. Uplift historically marginalized students together with their peers, and 3. Undergird undergraduate and graduate students skills and knowledge so that these students ultimately thrive in a space science, computer science, engineering, or science education career. SSUs StC approach is based on best practices developed over the past ~10 years by Dr. Jernigan and Prof. Cominsky. This approach supports students who come to SSU with little to no background in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM.) A significant population of SSU students work multiple jobs and are first-generation students. Ensuring that these students quickly learn, plan, and implement STEM practices to gather scientific data helps to retain them in STEM or STEM education pathways. Through these programs, students learned how to build microcontroller payloads for a variety of space science education projects including balloons, low and high-powered rockets, drones, and ultimately CubeSats. The onboarding process for potential CubeSat team members starts with learning how to code in the Logo language. Students then build flight electronics boards and program microcontrollers using Logo to command onboard components and gather data from sensors. These activities use a Logo-based CubeSat bus that can interface to a wide variety of scientific instruments. Students are prepared to build and interface scientific instruments to fly in space through a holistic STEM experience that models satellite scientific and engineering practices. Additional support is provided to StC students in developing soft skills needed to work within the norms and culture of earth and space science.