Sophomore, Aerospace Engineering
University of Arizona
Sean Gellenbeck is a second year Aerospace Engineering major at the University of Arizona. Although his time at the university has been short, he has participated in a number of activities that have prepared him for work on a microgravity experience. Sean has been involved with the UASEDS Rockoon project since the beginning of his freshman year. The main goal of this undertaking is to design, fabricate, and launch a rocket weather balloon hybrid know as a rockoon. The weather balloon will lift the rocket on a platform to some predetermined altitude and the rocket will then be launched from that point in order to reach the highest altitude possible. In addition, he has also been involved with the ASCEND! project since the beginning of his sophomore year. This is another weather balloon related endeavor in which schools from across Arizona design and build two payloads throughout the course of the academic year. These teams then com together on two different weekends during that time to launch their payloads as a group. The first launch happened in November of 2010 and the second in March 2011. After Sean completes his degree at the university, he plans to attend graduate school and study Astronautical Engineering. After receiving a graduate degree, he aspires to work for NASA in the field of interplanetary travel and habitation.
Sara MeschbergerJunior, Linguistics
University of Arizona
For the last six summers, Sara Meschberger has worked at the Challenger Space Center in Peoria teaching summer camps to pre-k thru eighth grade students. The camps she has taught throughout the years include women's biology and science, robotics, rocketry, our solar system and exoplanets, and space and water exploration. Sara has been involved with rocketry since she was a freshman in high school. She completer her level 1 and 2 certification for high powered rocketry at the age of 18. In college she joined the University of Arizona Rockoon Team which is a team building a rocket which will be sent on a weather balloon and launched at an altitude of 75,000 ft. She has also participated in the Space Grant ASCEND! project working on outreach and a camera system for taking panoramic picture of the curvature of the earth. This semester for the ASCEND! project she is doing an experiment to determine at what altitude sound is no longer to be heard. Sara has also had a very active role in Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) over the last two years. She was elected national representative by the University of Arizona chapter then last summer, through a special election, was elected as National Projects Director for SEDS-USA. This year she was elected as Vice chair. She has been working on the national endowment fund and made three successful competitions while on the board.
Nathan MogkJunior, Materials Science & Engineering
University of Arizona
Nathan Mogk is a junior undergraduate in Materials Science & Engineering and Applied Mathematics. Over the past several years, Nathan has participated in several engineering and research projects including: the UA ASCEND! project, which involved creating a scientific weather balloon payload, writing a Poisson solver using a GPU and research on silver substrate fuel-cell membranes. He also has two years of teaching experience with a materials processing lab and a solid-state chemistry lab. Nathan has been elected as the UASEDS Technology Officer for two years and is also an Eagle Scout. Nathan has a broad range of academic and personal interests and skills that reflect his multidisciplinary approach. These range from systems engineering to computer science to linguistics. Nathan also has a significant amount of practical experience with machine tools and fabrication techniques.
Kevin NewmanSenior, Optical Sciences & Engineering
University of Arizona
Kevin Newman is a senior undergraduate at the University of Arizona, majoring in Optical Sciences and Engineering with minors in Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering. Kevin has a plethora of experience with development and testing of optical imaging systems. During the spring of 2009 he studied abroad in Dublin, Ireland. At Dublin City University, he developed an image capturing platform for centrifugal micro-fluids. The goal of his project was to characterize the behavior of fluids bound in micro-channels as they spun at various frequencies. As part of his senior engineering capstone, Kevin developed a computer controlled camera inspection system for automated Zebrafish larvae tracking. The system included extensive image processing in MATLAB. Over the past summer as part of the 2010 NASA Ames Academy for Space Exploration, he developed the California Allsky Meteor Surveillance system of low-light level cameras to track and record meteors (cams.seti.org). Currently, Kevin is designing and testing a plane-spotting camera system for the Multiple Mirror Telescope Adaptive Optics Laser Guide Star system, as an undergraduate researcher in the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics.
Junior, Optical Sciences & Engineering
University of Arizona
Kyle Stephens is a current junior in Optical Sciences and Engineering at the University of Arizona. For the past three years, Kyle has worked for Dr. Roger Angel (the microgravity team advisor) supporting the development of a new solar concentrator. During the summer of 2009, Kyle participated in the NASA Undergraduate Student Research Program (USRP) at Marshall Space Flight Center. Working under Dr. Phil Stahl, Kyle developed a space telescope cost model to help determine future space telescope mission costs. During the summer of 2010, Kyle was selected to be a Research Associate in the NASA Academy at Marshall Space Flight Center. He worked with Dr. Tom Sever from the University of Alabama in Huntsville on an archaeological remote sensing project, using satellite imagery to find potential sites of interest in northern Guatemala. Kyle was selected to be a NASA Space Science Student Ambassador for the 2010/2011 school year, making him responsible for promoting the NASA Science Directorate within his local community. For the past three years, Kyle has served as the President of the University of Arizona chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS). In this capacity, he ha s been able to organize a variety of outreach events within the community as well as facilitate and lead engineering-related projects. ASCEND! is one such project, sponsored by the Arizona Space Grant Consortium, that involves designing, constructing, and launching several balloon payloads. Kyle participated in this program in 2009/2010 and is serving as the team lead for the 2010/2011 team.