Project POKE
Project POKE (Providing Opportunities for Keiki in Engineering) brings CubeSat building into Hawaiʻi's middle and high school classrooms.
Educators who sign up receive, at no cost, a 1U hardware kit, a basic lab tools kit, and enrollment in a 3-credit UH Mānoa online course with technical assistance from HSFL engineers. The kit includes a 3D-printed structure, battery pack, power distribution unit, on-board computer board, BeagleBone Black, Raspberry Pi Zero, IR camera, and solar panels with embedded torque coils.
Project POKE builds on the Artemis CubeSat Kit, adapting its educator course materials to K-12 education. The program combines an educator course, the CubeSat kit, a collaborative digital space, an open-ended design challenge and a symposium where students present their mission concepts. It was created to build a STEM community that offsets learning loss from the COVID-19 pandemic.
POKE is run by HSFL avionics engineer Amber Imai-Hong with ʻOhana Kilo Hōkū, a Native Hawaiian non-profit, together with HSFL, STEMWorks, Mauna Kea Observatories, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and the Hawaiʻi Science and Technology Museum.
At a glance
