NASA says a satellite from Morehead State University will be on the most powerful rocket ever built when it blasts off to the moon in 2018.
The Independent reports the announcement was made Thursday. NASA says the rocket, called the Space Launch System, will carry 13 small satellites, called CubeSats, along with an unnamed Orion crew capsule.
Benjamin Malphrus, Morehead's space science department chair and director of the Space Science Center at MSU, says the university's satellite will orbit the moon and its instruments will search for and map water ice on the moon's surface. The Orion launch will mark the university's first mission beyond Earth orbit.
Work is just beginning at MSU on building the satellite. Malphrus says they have two years to build and test it.