Try @ TXST

Giselle Kowalski:
Hi, everybody. My name is Giselle Kowalski, and I'm the digital marketing strategist here at Texas State University. You're listening to Try @ TXST, and today we're talking physics, space, and beyond.
You know that saying that it's not rocket science? Well, today it actually is. Have you ever looked up at the stars and wondered what's out there? It's a vast universe that makes us question ourselves, makes us feel super small, but gives us a purpose all at once.
At Texas State, there are Bobcats committed to unraveling the mysteries of the cosmos. And to better understand space, I spoke with two of our physics majors who are involved in the creation of the first satellite ever to be manufactured and built by Texas State students.
So hi, guys. Thank you for coming. To start us off, can you please tell me your names, your majors, where you're from and what you guys do at the Texas State Space Lab?

Matthew Johnson:
Yeah, my name is Matthew Johnson, and I'm a physics undergraduate. I'm a senior here at Texas State. I'm from Houston, and I mainly work with the operations side of the Space Lab, so I'm mainly concerned with the ground control infrastructure and the mission operation side of things.

Evan Jellison:
I'm Evan Jellison. I'm a physics graduate student, and I'm from Austin, Texas. So I'm the lab coordinator for Space Lab. Basically I work under Dr. Rangelov, who operates the lab, and I make sure that every person in the lab has what they need to get done and that we're staying on track and working together.

Giselle Kowalski:
So I'm going to start from the beginning with both of you.

Matthew Johnson:
OK.

Giselle Kowalski:
How did you both come to find this major and why did you choose physics to begin with?

Matthew Johnson:
Yeah, so as a kid, I had too many questions that my dad can't answer. I remember vividly him saying one time to me, "I think you need to just pursue something in physics because that's as close as you're going to get to any answer that I could give you." And that's literally where it started.
So throughout high school I read a lot of theoretical physics, a lot of Stephen Hawking, a little bit of Tyson, but a lot of the older Einstein and stuff like that, and then kind of got obsessed with it.

Giselle Kowalski:
Awesome. And so what about you, Evan?

Evan Jellison:
Yeah, so I actually started out as a film major way back in the day. Turns out I like watching movies more than making them, but one thing that always connected to me was sci-fi and kind of that realm of going beyond what we can currently do. And I think that's possibly why I landed in physics. I can't actually tell you a good definite answer for physics, but I'm glad I did, and I've always liked space, just like Matthew said, and I always knew I wanted to do research, when I came to physics, I want to do research in something space-related.

Giselle Kowalski:
That's awesome. You guys both have very different ways of getting into it, but very interesting ways. I'm honestly so surprised, Matthew, that you were reading Stephen Hawking in high school for fun.

Matthew Johnson:
Oh, yeah. I was the kid that was walking around with NASA hats at all times. And you can ask any friend that I had in high school, they all knew me because I had a red NASA hat for all four years of high school.

Giselle Kowalski:
OK. Let's go into the Space Labs. So who founded the Space Labs and what even is that to someone who has never heard of it before?

Evan Jellison:
Space Lab is a research organization here at Texas State open to any student, no matter your major, your grade level, doesn't matter, who are interested in doing what we call space technology and science research.
So we develop spacecraft that Texas State will be launching into space. We're actually working on our very first satellite called Bobcat Orbiter, and it's going to hopefully launch by the end of next year. We also develop different kind of modules that go into satellites, and also, like Matthew said earlier, ground infrastructure as well.
The kind of origin of it is funny. As an undergrad I wanted to do undergrad research, and like I said earlier, I wanted to do something space-related. So there were only two major professors in the physics department doing anything related to space, so I went to one of them and I asked, "Hey, I want to do a project. Is there anything you can let me do?" The first thing he said was, "I want to build a satellite."
And I had no idea how to do that. I was kind of shocked, and it kind of led us down this rabbit hole of next thing I know I'm going to conferences and we're putting together student organizations and stuff like that. And now here we are with the research lab. It's quite the journey.

Giselle Kowalski:
That's fantastic.

Evan Jellison:
Yeah.

Giselle Kowalski:
So the Bobcat Orbiter, are you guys modeling off of a specific satellite that's already out there right now or how are you guys going about making this?

Evan Jellison:
Yeah, so Bobcat Orbiter specifically is kind of like a hybridization between a kit that we purchased. We wanted our first satellite to be something that we could do with our knowledge base and our infrastructure that we already had.
But we are implementing some new designs into it. It's actually kind of a type of satellite called a TubeSat. It's a cylinder, is why it's called that. And it really is called that because it's a standardized satellite. It is the standard shape, size so that launch providers like NASA, SpaceX, they don't have to make a whole new launch vehicle for these satellites. It makes it cheaper.

Giselle Kowalski:
OK. At what point are you in in the process right now with making that?

Evan Jellison:
In terms of the satellite itself, we are very close to being done.

Giselle Kowalski:
Really?

Evan Jellison:
Some areas that are slowing us down but aren't impossible, a lot of government paperwork. It's not easy to launch a satellite. That's something that we're so new at and we've never done before.

Matthew Johnson:
That's part of the infrastructure that I was talking about earlier is every step of the way is something that we've never done. It's something that Texas State has never done, so everything that we've done has been due to everyone's dedication and willpower to just learn it. So we're literally building from the ground up. And so it makes the process extremely strenuous but extremely forgiving whenever you're rewarded with success.

Giselle Kowalski:
What kind of data are you guys trying to collect when this actually launches into space? What is the point and what is the prospects of this?

Evan Jellison:
So the data side is going to be very basic stuff like small sensors that tell us the temperature of the batteries, the battery voltage. It's really actually what the satellite can do, that's the goal. And if you would like to say.

Matthew Johnson:
Yeah. So we decided about maybe a month or two ago that the scientific payload that we're going to put onto Bobcat Orbiter is going to be what are called magnetorquers. This is part of an overbearing mission of ours to be able to facilitate in-house manufacturing of all the parts of our satellite.
And part of that is creating a way for our satellite to actually adjust its attitude. So when it's up in space, we want a mechanism that will allow us to adjust our positioning in its orbit. There's a few reasons why you want that, the main reason being radio communications.

Evan Jellison:
Another reason would be if you have a camera for example, you might want to point it at something. And there's several ways of doing that. The first is propulsion. So if you have some gas shooting out of your satellite. The other is something called momentum wheels. The best way of describing it is like a hard drive spinning. It creates a momentum that turns your satellite in space.
But what we're using is something really cool called a magnetorquer. And what that does is it produces a magnetic field in one direction and then it interacts with earth's magnetic field to create a torque. I like to describe it as it's an arm wrestle with earth's magnetic field, that our satellite will lose, but we want it to lose.

Matthew Johnson:
Yeah. And what's really neat about the magnetorquers is if we can have them working, then that's one more step towards in-house manufacturing, with the end goal of that being that ideally in a couple of years, we would love for researchers, people that are maybe wanting to do low-altitude orbit research, to be able to come to us and say, "Hey, we need a satellite built for these specifications and we're doing this kind of research." And we'd say, "OK, give us a couple of weeks and we'll build the satellite around your research and we'll be able to launch it within the next year."

Giselle Kowalski:
With that, you're kind of going into my next question. With that opportunity of people being able to come to the university and ask you for these parts, for you to manufacture them in the Space Lab, what kind of opportunities has the Space Lab given you that is outside of the university or within the university?

Matthew Johnson:
Oh, man. Just for me alone, it's been a list that I've been able to throw on our resume just because, like I said earlier, we've been developing everything on our own, so every step of the way has been pretty monumental in terms of just, I've had to learn a lot of different softwares in terms of simulations, but I've also had to learn a lot about radio communications and radio antenna theory.
Even without the actual access to equipment, just the learning alone from the Space Lab has been incredible for me, regardless of the resume that I get to build off of it. But just being able to say that I've had my hand in all of these incredible facets of space exploration is for me enough that we've had a lot of really cool opportunities that I can attribute a lot to Evan, because Evan's done a lot of reaching out to people, he's gone to a lot of conferences, and it's gotten the Texas State Space Lab name out to where we've been able to make some really, really neat connections and really cool networking.

Giselle Kowalski:
Can you namedrop?

Evan Jellison:
Yeah, we're working on a second satellite. It's part of a group that is involving Cal Poly Pomona, Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, and...

Matthew Johnson:
And Mt. San Antonio Community College.

Evan Jellison:
Yes. In California.

Giselle Kowalski:
Wow.

Evan Jellison:
Yeah.

Giselle Kowalski:
Wow, that's wild.

Matthew Johnson:
So Cal Poly Pomona, they're the ones who started the project. And their project is actually similar to what our eventual goal is, which is they are aiming to be able to build their own satellite kits, and they're kind of reaching out to us as test dummies essentially to test their kit and put it together and make sure that it works.
And then somewhere along the road, someone at NASA was like, "Hey, this is a really cool project. You should reach out to NASA and try to get a launch." And then they did, and then we did get a launch.
So part of the opportunity that I'm talking about is we now have a NASA launch, an actual NASA launch that we will have. The learning process that we would get from that is really cool because even more than Bobcat Orbiter, this is going to NASA, this will be launched through NASA. We'll be able to actually get somewhat of a connection with NASA, and hopefully we'll be able to rekindle that connection for every subsequent satellite launch.

Giselle Kowalski:
That's incredible. Do you have a name for this new one?

Evan Jellison:
The project itself is called Palates 5, because it's going to be a cluster of five satellites. We have not named ours yet.

Giselle Kowalski:
I know that the space industry in Texas is huge. We have SpaceX, we have NASA, right? But what do you guys see happening in the future for Texas? With what you guys are doing here at Texas State, what's that future like?

Evan Jellison:
Yeah, I like to tell people Texas State University, I know your question is about Texas at whole, yeah, but Texas State University is a wonderful geographical location. There's SpaceX near us. There's a company called Firefly. NASA's in Houston. We have such a good ability then to reach out to those companies and hopefully partner with them in the near future.
And as a whole in Texas, the space industry, it's not going anywhere. In fact, it's been growing exponentially, not just at the private sector, which we've all seen SpaceX and Blue Origin, but in the university area there's kind of this, I want to say renaissance, if you will, due to this CubeSat form factor. It's a lot cheaper to launch a satellite.
Our first one is going to be $12,000 total, which for me personally as a college student, that's a lot of money, but it's reasonable for a university. It's just an exponential growth. And Texas as a whole, we've already got the infrastructure already worked out.

Matthew Johnson:
The industry is like, "Hey, we need more people interested in this because we need workers." And education is saying, "Well, we can do that. We can actually afford to do that now." And so part of what Space Lab is, is answering that call and providing an education infrastructure at Texas State so that Texas State can also be integral in producing workers for the industry that is growing so fast right now.

Giselle Kowalski:
Right. Is there a space sector of the physics department right now? Is there even a major dedicated to that?

Evan Jellison:
No. We have just physics, but there are professors who are doing astrophysics research, and that's actually growing. The physics department has kind of three areas. Physics education is one research area, material science, and then astrophysics.

Matthew Johnson:
Before the Space Lab, there was no way to get an education or any form of involvement in any space technology projects or research. So that's part of what Space Lab is trying to achieve, is to provide that route for people.
Like he said, we have a huge knowledge base of people at Texas State and a massive interest from people that aren't even STEM majors. We're trying to give them that option and give them the ability to actually delve into what I feel is their human right, which is to be curious about space and exploring it.

Giselle Kowalski:
What has building this, and space in general, this field, taught you about yourself?

Evan Jellison:
I think honestly, it's taught me that there is access to people or anyone really to space. And that's what I want Space Lab to be, is it's a gateway for people to get into the industry, to get into this kind of research.
And you don't have to be a physics major. We've had people who are in anthropology, we had one philosophy person join us once. I think that as long as you have a curiosity about space, it's accessible to you. At least it should be. You just need to find the right pathways, and I think this could be a pathway.

Matthew Johnson:
To jump off what he said, I think a key word that he used is "should be," because the more that I go into space exploration, and the more that I learn about how people view it, the more I realize that we kind of are all astronomers. Every one of us has looked up at the sky and just wondered what that was.
This is something that should be accessible by everyone. Everyone has that interest in space, and everyone, if you want to, should pursue that, because that's part of your human nature and it's part of what drives us, is to explore what we're curious about. And I think we all have that curiosity and that's kind of part of the shared experience in the Space Lab.

Giselle Kowalski:
Yeah, that's a beautiful way to say it. What are y'all's next steps after graduating? Because I know you're graduating. And how's that going to work if you're leaving? What are you going to do?

Evan Jellison:
What are we going to do without you?

Giselle Kowalski:
Yeah.

Matthew Johnson:
Well, I'm going to UTSA, so I won't be that far. And I'm planning on collaborating because I've not done much delving into UTSA, but I'm pretty sure they don't have a satellite program, so I might start one at UTSA. I don't know.

Evan Jellison:
Matthew's going to be our mole at UTSA. He's going to get us involved with them too.

Matthew Johnson:
Yeah. I mean-

Evan Jellison:
That's how we make connections.

Giselle Kowalski:
Have an insider.

Matthew Johnson:
Of course I want to-

Evan Jellison:
Yeah, exactly.

Matthew Johnson:
Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but of course I want to go to UTSA and do whatever I want to do, but my heart is still at Texas State because I helped start the Space Lab and-

Giselle Kowalski:
Yeah, once a Bobcat, always a Bobcat.

Matthew Johnson:
Right. Yeah, right. When I go to UTSA, I'm definitely going to be continuing to collaborate with the Space Lab, because I want to see it grow, and I'm certainly going to be here for the satellite launch because I want to see that. But yeah, that's my plans. I'm going on for a master's in aerospace engineering, but I won't be that far, so I'll be able to collaborate.

Giselle Kowalski:
It'll definitely be like the celebrity guest appearance whenever you come back to the campus.

Evan Jellison:
Absolutely. We'll have the red carpet out for you anytime you come over. You bet.

Matthew Johnson:
I'm expecting it.

Giselle Kowalski:
And what about you, Evan?

Evan Jellison:
Yeah, ideally I'd like to actually stay here and work here as probably a lecture position if I can. If it's offered, I would do that. Yeah.

Giselle Kowalski:
That's fantastic. I love that. Do you guys have any advice for future Bobcats or current Bobcats that, as you said, have an interest or even an inkling into getting into something space-related? And I know you guys are going to say, "Just try it." But beyond that?

Evan Jellison:
I don't know. This may be a little harsh, but I think oftentimes in grade school we are taught a certain way about science, and there's a lot of ways you can get discouraged by science. It's very hard. I mean, let's not sugarcoat it, it is a hard thing to do, but the curiosity is just all you need.
I think if you put in the right amount of time, the right amount of effort, anyone can go into research and doing space. Anyone can do space technology research, and that's really what I like to drive home for most people and including Bobcats who might not even want to do space as a major, like physics or any kind of STEM as a major. For Space Lab you don't have to be a STEM major. You can be whatever major you want and you can just dedicate as much time as you want. You don't have to even do any of the building or anything like that. If you just want to come in and learn about soldering, coding or anything like that, you can do it.
And so I would say, I know you said don't say try it, but that is the best way of getting to know what you want to do, is trying it, taking that plunge, that leap and seeing what works for you.
And there are norms that we have to break down too. STEM majors and STEM departments are very male-oriented, and so we want to make sure that there's leadership roles that resemblance of what actual the population of Texas State is. That's, I think, another major point that should be taught and should be put across, is that it's not for specific kinds of people, it's for all kinds of people.

Giselle Kowalski:
My last question is kind of silly, but can you guys tell me your best space joke if you have one?

Evan Jellison:
Oh, man, that's on the spot. Darn. Space joke. Space joke. OK. Why did the people not like the restaurant on the moon?

Giselle Kowalski:
I don't know. Why?

Evan Jellison:
Because there was no atmosphere. There you go.

Matthew Johnson:
I wouldn't like that either.

Giselle Kowalski:
I wouldn't like that. I require a restaurant with nice lighting, so yeah, I get it.

Evan Jellison:
That's true.

Giselle Kowalski:
I get it.

Evan Jellison:
And maybe oxygen to breathe.

Matthew Johnson:
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Giselle Kowalski:
Awesome, guys.

Matthew Johnson:
That's secondary though. I need lighting.

Giselle Kowalski:
Awesome. So to end this off, where can they find you on Instagram, on socials? What is the handle so that anybody could find y'all to get in contact with you and?

Matthew Johnson:
Yeah, it's @txstspacelab. So Texas State abbreviated, Space Lab on Instagram.

Evan Jellison:
And honestly, you go there, follow us, and then if you want to join, just message us. We're happy to talk to you, and then you can just stop by the lab and see what we're doing. If you're listening to this now and you're thinking, "I can't do science," that's not true. You can do science, and you should do it.

Giselle Kowalski:
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for having this conversation with me. Y'all rock.

Matthew Johnson:
Of course. Thanks for having us.

Evan Jellison:
Thank you for having us. Yeah.

Giselle Kowalski:
Thank you.
Thank you to both Evan and Matthew for sharing everything you guys know about physics and the Space Labs and the satellite. It's really comforting knowing that we can all get into space with just one ounce of curiosity.
And thank you for listening to this episode of the Try @ TXST Podcast. Make sure to tune in next time to learn more about something else you can try on campus at Texas State.
And also remember to follow us on our social media @txst. This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State University Network represent the views of the hosts and guests, not of Texas State University.
Again, I'm your host, Giselle Kowalski, and I'll see you next time. Bye, y'all.