GB CubeSat team on The Ranch 99.1

It was so exciting to hear our students, Annabelle Hynes and Asher Brown, talking to The Ranch about our CubeSat program.  Adam Lucas, Faculty, and Dan Vigna, our General Dynamics partner, joined the students to promote our mission and plans for the satellite.  The team also announced the ribbon cutting ceremony on our Ground Station November 3rd at our GBHS Open House.

Grace Brethren High School, in a partnership with General Dynamics, is endeavoring to launch a CubeSat into orbit around the Earth.  A CubeSat is a small satellite; four inches cubed.  This small satellite will be designed and built by students with the help of Savage Machining.  Grace Brethren is also building a ground station on the Jr/Sr High campus that will track the satellite as it passes by above. 

The students building it will either be enrolled in the new class titled Spacecraft Engineering or in the after-school club that meets monthly.  In Spacecraft Engineering, students will learn various engineering disciplines: mechanical, electrical, and orbital mechanics.

Students will place a to-be-determined experiment on the CubeSat.  They will then track, monitor, and record the data that is sent back to Earth.  Students will also have the opportunity to interact with engineers and share their data with other educational institutions.

Grace Brethren Schools is committed to being a leader in the STEM education field.  Currently the school offers, two junior high and four high school engineering courses.  Each of the high school courses is UC Approved for honors credit, and each year a new course will be added to the curriculum.  The advanced science and math curriculum complement the STEM program with advanced, honors, and advanced placement options in every field.  GBS also offers a world class robotics program at both the Jr/Sr and Elementary campuses.   Our graduates continue their studies in the STEM field at prestigious universities and colleges and have been awarded internships at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.  With this CubeSat program, Grace becomes one of only a small handful of high schools in America who will have its very own satellite in outer space.  Grace is the place to be if your student is interested in the Engineering field.

Daniel Vigna, Program Manager at General Dynamics, explains why his company choose to partner with GBS, “We connected right away with the staff at Grace. Principal Hynes and Mr. Lucas share our passion for teaching STEM to the next generation of scientists and engineers and were just as excited as we are about building a satellite at Grace. The students we've met so far have all been very capable and we're looking forward to sharing our knowledge and experience with them”.