These UC Bearcats are heading to space. (OK, their experiments are.)

NASA is sending a group of University of Cincinnati students to space – via their homemade satellites.

UC engineering and computer science students are building satellites about the size of a Rubik's Cube to study harmful radiation.

NASA is launching small, university-made satellites called "cubesats" into orbit around the Earth. America's space agency selected the UC CubeCats' mission on March 2. Now, the student group is waiting for a launch date.

"I get to lead a project that puts something in space," said Nathan Chiles, a second-year aerospace engineering student. "It’s great that I get to do something so cool and productive during my undergraduate years."

UC team's "cubesats" will use sensors to test whether a thin carbon shield can protect astronauts from deadly exposure to radiation during long-term space flights.

It's a problem for astronauts headed to Mars – and beyond – that the Bearcats want to fix.

"Deep space exploration exposes astronauts to all kinds of radiation," said Himadi Pandey, the UC CubeCats president. "The harmful effects can lead to cancer and cause issues in the brain."

Astronauts at the International Space Station are protected by the earth's magnetic fields. When the Apollo missions went to the moon, they were only exposed for a couple of days.

It takes months to get beyond Earth's orbit, past the moon to Mars, Jupiter or Saturn. If you add the time astronauts would be on the planet's surface and the trip back it could be a year or more spent in an extremely radiation-heavy environment.

"We could build a spacecraft to get us to these places," said Chiles, the chief project engineer. "The real issue is radiation."

Currently, the only methods of protection involve lining ships with heavy material, which add weights and cuts back on the number of astronauts and equipment that can be on board, Chiles said. And recreating that environment on Earth is nearly impossible.

These students have a solution: send a cubesat that's partially covered in a strong, lightweight carbon composite into space to test how the material protects against ionizing radiation.

Simple, right?

They'll use six sensors to test how much radiation can be absorbed and how much is being reflected by the material. There's a communications system on the satellite that transmits the data to a station the students built on the roof of the old chemistry building on campus. A computer there collects the data from the sensors and the communications system transmits that stored data.

"We’re developing most of the hardware ourselves," said Chiles. "We're not using commercial space grade components."

How long will it be up there?

That "depends on their orbit altitude," said Chiles, said. "We could be up for as little as six months and as long as 20 years. The time the satellite spends in orbit will determine how long we collect data."

If the carbon material works, the fibers can be woven into clothing and suits, canvasses for a habitat on Mars and the lining of ship walls.

"This is something that is actually helpful to the industry and for people," Pandey said. "And, now, it's possible."

The team won grants totaling nearly $200,000 to design and build its first two cubesats.

This one is called LEOPARD, an acronym for Low-Earth Orbit Platform for Aerospace Research and Development. It's supported by grants from MOOG Space and Defense Group, UC’s University Funding Board and the Ohio Space Grant Consortium.

The second project will have cubesats take photos of the Great Lakes from space in a partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to study toxic algae.

Once the satellites are constructed and pass shock-and-pressure testing, they'll be ready for deployment.

NASA picked 11 projects in its ninth round of the CubeSat Launch Initiative, which has launched 59 of the small satellites into orbit in total. The students will work with NASA to figure out the details of the launch, including how the satellites will get up there and when.

NASA plans to have all the small research satellites fly as auxiliary payloads aboard space missions planned to launch in 2019, 2020, and 2021.