Hello,
I’m Ben Cook, the Hardware Engineering intern for MARSfarm over the summer. I just finished my freshman year at WashU, where I am studying Systems Engineering and am on the WashU Racing Formula SAE team. This summer, I will be working on the hardware for the MV1 and GBE products, the firmware for the MV1, and new product development. I’m looking forward to working with everyone to “grow” together!
Something he forgot to mention, @ben is a big time #spacenerd! As a matter of fact, in high-school he was part of a team that designed an experiment to better understand the behavior and properties of lunar regolith in microgravity and vacuum. Their design placed the lunar regolith in a sealed container with transparent ports, to allow for camera visibility. Cameras then record how the regolith floats in the space environment and if it undergoes any aggregation. A custom PCB flight computer will be used to trigger the cameras and record the data. Unfortunately, the experiment payload did not make it into space - due to a rocket failure.
Ben’s team is still waiting to hear whether they’ll get a second chance at sending up their payload or not. However, if you’re a high-school student (@spacenerd) that’s wondering how you could send an experiment into space - just tag @ben and I’m sure he’ll be happy to share more details about their project!