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WSGC Student Spotlight: Bennett Bartel

October 19, 2020

Congratulations to this week’s #WSGCStudentSpotlight, Bennett Bartel! Bennett is the recipient of a WSGC Undergraduate Scholarship and is currently a junior studying Physics at Carthage College.

Upon arriving at Carthage in Fall 2018, Bennett joined a few of the ongoing space-related projects, starting with the Midwest Rocket Launch Competition (MRL) as a simulations team member. Through the competition Bennett developed skills necessary to easily integrate into Carthage’s “Microgravity Team”, where he received a summer internship experience funded through WSGC as an undergraduate research fellow. The capstone of this research experience was presented at the 2019 Wisconsin Space Conference. 

As part of Carthage’s student research team, Bennett drafted and configured a NASA-funded research payload for flight to suborbital space onboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle. The payload implements MPG, a high-resolution low-gravity fuel gauging technology. As a team member on Carthage’s MPG Development Team, Bennett had the opportunity to get involved in a separate research and development project called Magneto-active Slosh Control (MaSC). The objective is to test a potentially effective way to suppress propellant slosh in a zero-gravity environment. To support this project Bennett experienced zero-gravity while testing the payload on board a parabolic flight campaign in November 2019 with the aid of NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program, which was a life changing experience that cemented his career objectives and interest in aerospace science and engineering. 

Congratulations Bennett, and best of luck to you in your future!

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