Recent News
Civil engineering faculty member selected for ASEE early career award
July 9, 2024
Two Engineering undergrads receive New Mexico Space Grant Consortium Scholarships
July 8, 2024
Open forums for associate dean for academic affairs candidates announced
June 21, 2024
UNM hosts Railroader of the Mid-Century to promote careers in smart railroads
June 20, 2024
News Archives
COSMIAC demo sparks interest with high-schoolers
March 6, 2024 - by Kim Delker
A student solders components together at COSMIAC.
Of all the activities that high-schoolers can partake in after school, that most likely doesn’t include joining metals together to form an electrical bond.
But on Feb. 22, that’s exactly what students from the STEM and Robotics Club at Sue V. Cleveland High School learned to do at the COSMIAC facilities south of the UNM campus.
Staffers from COSMIAC, a space-related research center in the UNM School of Engineering, gave a soldering demo to students, allowing them to solder their own devices called Lectennas.
Lectennas are an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research (SSPIDR) project developed in collaboration with the Naval Research Laboratory. Just a few inches long, Lectennas are rectifying antennas (rectennas) that contain a light-emitting diode (LED). The construction of the diodes results in a net positive voltage when it detects frequencies in the range that includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals, which causes the LED to light up.
Lectennas have proven to be a successful outreach tool for COSMIAC for the past several years.
In addition to the soldering lesson, students also received a tour of COSMIAC to get a sense of what kinds of research that is open to students in the School of Engineering.