RockOn Workshop – apply now for June 2025!

RockOn 2025 banner image

RockOn, a workshop at Wallops Flight Facility for sounding rocket payload design, is an exciting chance for faculty and students to kickstart payload projects at their home institutions. Participants in the workshop will build a working scientific payload and then see it launch on a real sounding rocket!

MDSGC intends to sponsor one or more teams for each year’s workshop and encourages Maryland students and/or faculty to submit applications for team sponsorship! For 2025, the RockOn registration is now open and closes on February 14, 2025. If you are interested for this year or an upcoming year, please visit NASA’s RockOn page to apply and also contact MDSGC to let us know of your interest.

Here is a summary of important information about RockOn 2025:

  • Application deadline is 02/14/25 – but why wait?
  • 1 faculty mentor from the applicant institution must be willing to attend.
  • 2 students from the applicant institution must be able to commit to attending.
  • Attending faculty and students must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
  • Workshop dates are June 20-27, 2025.
  • Location is NASA/Wallops, with hotels nearby in Chincoteague, VA.
  • In order for you to participate, NASA must select your application – it’s not automatic.
  • MDSGC will pay the workshop registration and travel costs for all Maryland institutions/participants that are selected, subject to the availability of funds.

Friday, November 1

We will be open the evening of Friday, November 1 from 8 to 10 pm.

From 8 to 9 pm, we’ll look at Ring Nebula and the Hercules Globular Cluster with the camera. After 9 pm, we’ll be looking at Saturn through the eyepiece.

Friday, October 25

We will be open the evening of Friday, October 25 from 7:30 – 9:30 pm. There’s a small chance we’ll get clouded out, so make sure to take a look at the sky before heading over later in the evening.

From 7:30 to 8:30 pm, we’ll say farewell to C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS by looking at it one last time with a camera on the refractor. After that, we’ll be looking at Saturn and the Hercules Globular Cluster.

Friday, October 18

We will be open from 7 to 9 pm tonight. From 7 to 7:45 pm, we’ll be looking at C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS with a camera on the refractor. 7:45 pm will be the last call to go up to the dome to see it, as it will be too low to look at by 8 pm. After that, we will look at Saturn and the Hercules Globular Cluster.

Friday, October 11

We will be open from 8 to 10 pm tonight, Friday, October 11. We’ll be looking at Saturn and the Hercules Globular Cluster using the eyepiece. There’s a very small chance that we’ll be able to see aurora tonight. If you can get somewhere dark, that would give you better odds of seeing it than the roof of Bloomberg. We can promise there will be good company though!