🚀 Serpent goes to NASA Wallops! 🛰️

From July 19 to 25, the Serpent team had the incredible opportunity to travel to Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, USA. Representing the project were Chris Jensen, Askar Holte Storbakk and Simon Tøllefsen along with PhD candidate Laura-Kristin Scholtz (UiT), who has been working on project management and administration together with Seweryn Roznowski.

After flying out from Oslo on July 19 and arriving in Washington, DC, they drove five hours to Wallops the next day. There, they joined the rest of the Norwegian delegation and began the hands-on work of preparing our CubeSat for integration into the launch module developed by Andøya Space.

On July 21, they met with the other teams from the U.S. and held presentations about our mission. It was inspiring to hear about the wide variety of experiments going into space on the Ghost Mission Rocket.

The following days consisted of testing, waiting (a lot of waiting) and bonding. They got to work on programming our distance sensor system, they visited the NASA gift shop (more than once!), and got to know the other participants, both professionally and socially.

🧪 Here’s a quick overview of the main testing that was done:

Sequence testing: Simulating launch scenarios to verify the correct order of events.

Vibration testing: Only one reaction wheel came loose this time, compared to three during earlier tests at Andøya. Progress!

Skirt deployment and CubeSat ejection: Using dummy satellites.

Post-sequence testing: Ensuring all systems still worked after vibration.

RF noise testing: Verifying that the rocket and payloads don't interfere with each other.

They wrapped up testing a day earlier than expected, July 24 became their last official day at NASA. That got celebrated with a team dinner for all participants, a taco buffet, ice cream boxes, and some light entertainment!

🎉 A special shoutout to Chris, who celebrated his birthday on July 22, right in the middle of NASA testing. Happy (belated) birthday!

During their stay, they also spent time with the rest of the Norwegian teams, enjoyed a beautiful sunrise one morning, and explored DC before heading home. Highlights included visits to both the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum downtown and the Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport. Definitely worth the trip!