University of Houston Logo

 

 

OBSERVING OUR CHANGING PLANET


Project Logo
Learn to Build Spacecraft and Related Ground Based Experiments in NASA Designed Undergraduate Student Instrument Project

Launch Scene

About the Course

This course is an outcome of the 2015 NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Undergraduate Student Instrument Project (USIP) Student Flight Research Opportunity competition that encouraged U.S. universities to offer undergraduate courses or clubs that build an Earth or space science payload that could fly on a suborbital vehicle, such as a sounding rocket, balloon, aircraft, or commercial suborbital reusable launch vehicles or provide related ground based observations.

The College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, the Cullen College of Engineering, the Technology Division, and The Honors College at UH are offering a two year program for credit to design and build ground instruments or balloon borne spacecraft to study the aurora borealis, the upper atmosphere, and earth science questions using ground-based sensors or multiple payloads on hand launched balloons.

See the excitement of the program for yourself in this video.

The student team will be multidisciplinary and include undergraduate students from all disciplines including engineering, science, humanities, business, art, and other fields.

LTeam of 4 students with aurora

Deploy Experiments in Alaska

A select number of students will be able to travel to Alaska in 2025 to launch or deploy the experiments.

The start of UH’s Observing Our Changing Planet (USIP VI) program has been adjusted to support the eclipses. We accepted ~13 early-start students into the program in January 2023. We accepted an additional ~15 students for Fall 2023 to round-out the USIP VI cohort for Alaska, 2025. The next major new class will be admitting students in Fall, 2025.

Need more information?

Additional information or questions can be obtained by sending email to one of the contacts below:

Prof. Edgar Bering, eabering@uh.edu

Prof. Andrew Renshaw, arenshaw@Central.UH.EDU

2018 USIP launch

Supporters and Donors

Institutions

Funding for development of the USIP program was provided by NASA Grants NNX13AR57G and NNX16AK65A. Additional funds are provided by several University of Houston offices, including Office of the Provost, Division of Research, Cullen College of Engineering, Department of Physics, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and College of Technology.

Major Donors

We continue to receive substantial funding from several generous supporters, including Drs. Andrew Askew, Edgar Bering, Carolyn Farb, Ben Longmier, and Phil Inderwiesen; Barbara Clark, Cary Drott, Rachel Gamblin, John Guthery, and Pat Tovsen.

Add Your Support

Donate Now!

Student Blogs

A student blog from the 2017 and 2018 campaigns can be found at https://usip-uh.weebly.com/.

Project alumni and present students have volunteered to provide student perspective. Ask questions by email to any of the following:

Arian Ehteshami ffehteshami@yahoo.com;
Rachel Gamblin rbgamblin@live.com;
Presley Greer presleygreer@my.unt.edu;
Bryan Gunawan bryan.gunawan95@gmail.com;
Elizabeth Hernandez eli83santos@gmail.com;
Kyle Myren k.t.myren@gmail.com;
Afriaa Nasir afriaa.annani.nasir@gmail.com;
Michelle Nowling micnowling@gmail.com;
Itay Porat itaygp@gmail.com;
Jason Ruszkowski Jason.ruszkoski@gmail.com;
Nikolai Sardo nikolai.sardo@gmail.com;
Aliasghar Shariff aliasgharshariff@gmail.com;
Aaron Smith aaronbsmith2001@gmail.com;
Chloe Tovar chloetovar19@gmail.com;
Alexandra Ulinski Arulinski@uh.edu

 

Fixing a detector

 

USIP Class Learning Soldering

Launch from Chatanka Lodge

Cullen College of Engineering, the Technology Division , the Colleges of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and Honors Are Accepting Enrollment in Two Year Project to Conduct Balloon-Borne and Ground-based Geospace, Earth, and Atmospheric Science Investigations in the Auroral Zone.