Instruments built by College of Charleston students and Pensievision, a San Diego imaging startup whose co-founder and chief technology officer is a college astrophysics professor, are now in orbit.
Two payloads co-built by the college and the company flew aboard SUCHAI-4, a small CubeSat satellite from the University of Chile, which launched early on July 7 on a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, according to the college and the university.
The satellite carries an ultraviolet imaging system meant to watch nearby star systems for radiation outbursts. Joe Carson, the professor who supervised the students’ work, said the goal is to better understand the radiation that hypothetical planets around such stars would face, including planets that are candidates for hosting life, the college reported.
The University of Chile leads the mission. The College of Charleston leads one of the payloads and is a co-investigator on the other, the college said. Kevin Gainey, a scholar-in-residence in the college’s physics and astronomy department and lead hardware engineer at Pensievision, attended the payloads’ integration at the University of Southern California in June.
The launch was the second half of a two-part mission. In April, a payload with an identical ultraviolet system and a liquid lens camera for monitoring biological specimens went to the International Space Station, where the UV system was tested with a compact laser that mimicked starlight. The college said at the time that the cameras would collect data for about six months, with the information analyzed after the payload returns in the fall. The college has not announced results on its news site.
“I think it’s definitely rare to have undergraduate students playing such a central role,” Carson said in April.
The S.C. Research Authority, which counts Pensievision as a member company, describes Carson as its founder. The company’s imaging platform was originally developed using NASA satellite technology and has been used in rural African clinics to support cervical cancer detection, according to the authority. Carson told SCBIZ in 2025 that the company’s research and development has always been based in Charleston, while most of its business executives work at its San Diego headquarters.
