Inside the Ivy

Inside the Ivy: Brown is Sending Something Into Space

The one with Brown in space and Columbia in the snow.

Brown student group is launching a satellite

After 7 years of work, Brown’s student satellite is cleared for NASA launch⠀ ⠀ A small satellite, designed and built by Brown undergraduates, will launch on an Antares rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia, on May 1. (🔗 in bio) ⠀ ⠀ 🛰️🛰️🛰️🛰️🛰️🛰️🛰️🛰️🛰️⠀ ⠀ For the past seven years, a rotating group of Brown University undergraduates has been toiling away quietly in the Barus and Holley building — designing, building and testing a small satellite with the hope of ultimately sending into orbit.⠀ ⠀ Last week that satellite, a 4-inch cube dubbed EQUiSat, passed its final preflight checks and is “go” for a scheduled May 1 launch.⠀ ⠀ “When we completed all the systems checks and everything worked perfectly, I think we were honestly in disbelief,” said Hunter M. Ray, a senior engineering concentrator and the team’s project manager. “Despite having gained significantly more confidence in the satellite over the past few months, so much has gone wrong during the course of the program. It’s a relief for it to have all gone well.”⠀ ⠀ For Hannah Varner, who graduated in 2014 as a team leader when the group first applied for a launch under NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative, the feeling was something more like elation.⠀ ⠀ “The shortest version of how I feel is: AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,” she wrote in an email. “Sure we dreamt about the mythical time of ‘launch,’ but it was miles from reality when we wrote the application to NASA in 2014. [But now] it’s finally real.”⠀ ⠀ Very real.⠀ ⠀ EQUiSat is now cleared to be included on a NASA resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS), scheduled to launch aboard an Antares rocket on May 1 from Wallops Island, Virginia. Sometime in late May or early June, ISS astronauts will deploy EQUiSat, along with several other CubeSats, into orbit some 250 miles above the Earth.⠀ ⠀ Continue reading at news.brown.edu (🔗 in bio) #BrownUniversity

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A continuously evolving NASA-funded group of Brown University students will be launching their satellite into space after seven years of work. On May 9, the group of two-hundred past and present members will watch their EQUiSat satellite launch into space.

The Brown Daily Herald reports, “The project, funded by NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative, will send a small cube satellite to the International Space Station to then launch into orbit. The EQUiSat will test lithium iron phosphate batteries, which are used in machines such as lawn mowers, but find limited applications in spacecrafts.”

The satellite also serves as a symbol of the accessibility of space with its low cost and its visibility from the ground due to it being on the same latitude as Providence, RI.

UPenn reports: The Chinese international student struggle

Chinese students make up roughly one-third of all the international students in the U.S., but many struggle socially due to linguistic and cultural barriers, as well as from professional and academic pressure.

The Daily Pennsylvanian reports, “At Penn, where around 38% of international students are Chinese, the administration has taken some steps to ease the transition, like creating Mandarin–speaking support groups at CAPS.”

Many Chinese students feel these programs don’t do enough, though, or simply don’t feel comfortable using them at all.