A Robertsville Middle School project to build a miniature satellite that is now taking pictures from 250 miles above Earth was born around Christmas 2014. That’s when two men who first became friends years ago at Oak Ridge High School had a conversation at their Oak Ridge church.
They were Todd Livesay, a science and technology teacher at Robertsville Middle School (RMS), and Patrick Hull, an aeronautical engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Hull suggested that the two work together on an educational project.
The culmination of the student efforts, guided by mentors, was RamSat, a miniature “CubeSat” satellite named after the RMS mascot and now cruising in outer space. The story of RamSat and a progress report were presented recently by Livesay and three mentors during a public meeting of ORION, the local amateur astronomy organization.
Starting in 2016, mentors for the students were recruited from ORNL and the Y-12 National Security Complex. Other recruits included parents and David Andrews, a ham radio operator.
On 3rd June 2021, six-and-a-half years after the Livesay-Hull reunion at Christmas during which 235 RMS students handled RamSat’s many components, the RMS CubeSat was launched by a SpaceX rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Some 24 hours later, RamSat reached the International Space Station (ISS).
Media Story - https://autos.yahoo.com/autos/ramsat-taking-photos-while-orbiting-010006564.html
