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NASA RockSat Program

Welcome to the RockOn and RockSat programs. These hands-on programs connect higher education students and faculty from across the United States with opportunities to fly their experiments into space on NASA Wallops Flight Facility sounding rockets.  RockOn and RockSat started in 2008 and have provided thousands of students and faculty with real-world flight experiences and experimentation.  Most students get started with RockOn, but it is not required. 

A large group of students watches as a sounding rocket launches in the background.

Please read additional details below about each program.

RockOn!

Build your first sounding rocket experiment

RockOn is a hands-on workshop teaching participants how to create a sounding rocket experiment from scratch over the course of 7 days and then launching it into space on the 8th day of the workshop.  This is a team experience and takes place at Wallops Flight Facility and nearby off-site locations, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

The workshop is designed for college students and faculty. There are no prerequisites for participants. Anything needed to be successful at the workshop will be taught at the workshop. Team size is 3 people (2 students and 1 faculty member). Each team builds one RockOn experiment. All experiments will fly on the rocket and into space. You must sign-up as a community college or university team; no individual registrations will be accepted.

Apply NOW to participate in RockOn 2026!

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A large group of people poses in front of a tall frame holding a small black, red, and yellow sounding rocket vertically.
On June 22, 2023, NASA’s RockOn and RockSat student flight programs pose in front of a Terrier-Improved Orion suborbital sounding rocket. This is the 15th year that NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program has supported flight opportunities for the RockOn and RockSat programs, which provide students a hands-on opportunity to develop flight experiments.