A “boom” is a deployable structure used to keep our magnetic field instruments at a distance from the rocket or satellite. This is so that it isn’t effected by the magnetic noise of the spacecraft. For cube sats (small satellites), booms are so small that they can’t operate in Earth gravity and need to be tested in microgravity. University of Iowa students were part of a team that tested the booms at the ZERO-G facility in Florida in November 2019.

NASA has awarded Prof. Miles $199,999 for the CABOOM project.