Engineering Students Participate in NASA LaACES Project

The culmination of a semester’s hard work for a team of McNeese State University engineering students took place this summer in Ragley in a balloon launch for the NASA LaACES project, “Development of Radiation Detection Payloads for the 2024 Solar Eclipse Events.”

Mechanical engineering senior Clara Rosini and project mentors Dr. Bei Xie, associate professor of computer engineering, and Dr. Zhaung Li, professor of mechanical engineering, were on hand for the launch.

“The LaACES project provides engineering students with true hands-on experiences on circuit design, programming, project management and data collection and analysis,” said Li.

The main goal of this year’s project was to design a LaACES payload with a Geiger counter to detect ironizing radiation of the Earth’s atmosphere, along with temperature and humidity measurements.

Originally, the payload was to be launched during the solar eclipse on April 8 as part of the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project sponsored by NASA at the

NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility at Palestine, Texas, but the weather didn’t cooperate.

The student team who designed the project consisted of Rosini, Cristina Gil, a computer engineering senior, Elijah Adediran, electrical engineering junior, Zarin Manita, computer engineering senior, and Reese Nordan, mechanical engineering freshman.