College of Charleston’s small-satellite payload launches to space, completing mission
July 7, 2026
Kevin Gainey, scholar-in-residence at the College of Charleston’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and lead hardware engineer at Pensievision, attended the payload integration on June 11, 2026. Two payloads co-built by CofC and Pensievision were successfully integrated into the CubeSat at the University of Southern California.
The final part of a two-part mission sent College of Charleston undergraduate students’ research instruments to space overnight, placing the College’s first-ever contribution to a space-based mission into orbit. The CubeSat carrying CofC students’ payload launched Tuesday, July 7, at 3:00 a.m.
This early morning launch on Tuesday will now complete the second half of the two-part mission.
While the International Space Station experiment tested the student-developed ultraviolet imaging system in space using a compact laser to simulate incoming starlight, the CubeSat mission will use an identical imaging system to observe nearby star systems for bursts of radiation.
Joe Carson, professor of astrophysics at the College of Charleston who supervised the students’ work, says the goal is to better understand the radiation environments experienced by hypothetical orbiting planets around such stars, including planets that are candidates for hosting life.
The Principal Investigator institute for the CubeSat mission is University of Chile, while CofC is the lead for one of the payloads and co-investigator for the other.
Read more about part one: the ultraviolet imaging system payload developed by two CofC undergraduate students, which was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on April 11, 2026.
Additional information, including a link to watch the launch coverage, can be found on the SpaceX website: https://www.spacex.com/launches/transporter17
