The Rhodes College chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) has been named the recipient of the 2024-25 Chapter Research Award from the SPS National Office for final work on Rhodes’ 1U cube satellite RHOK-SAT to be launched in space this year.
Since 2021, a team of Rhodes faculty and students have been working on the project as part of the NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative, which provides U.S. universities, high schools, and nonprofit organizations the opportunity to fly their miniature satellites aboard a NASA-sponsored rocket. RHOK-SAT is in the final stages of development—assembling and testing the final hardware meant for the flight model.
RHOK-SAT is a collaboration between Rhodes and the University of Oklahoma Photovoltaic Materials and Devices Group to characterize the behavior, performance, and degradation of novel perovskite solar cells in Low Earth Orbit. RHOK-SAT will be one of the first missions to test and conduct in-orbit measurements of perovskites, which have shown increased efficiencies when compared to traditional types of solar cells.
The RHOK-SAT team will be exploring how the cells hold up under solar radiation and the overall environment of space and if this type of cell material shows promise for future lunar and planetary missions.