An eighth grader at St. John’s Catholic School in Brunswick was selected as a finalist in the 2025 University of Southern Maine CubeSat Design Competition.

The competition challenge is to design a 1.5U CubeSat — a type of miniature satellite — that can perform a science or technology mission. Competing solo, Joseph Stratman’s mission, OnPiste, will investigate the effects of radiation on electron ionization and the geomagnetic field’s influence on irradiance.

Stratman is one of only 12 finalists chosen from 33 middle and high school teams across Maine that participated in Phase A, which ran from Nov. 22, 2024, to Feb. 28, 2025. Stratman was notified in early March that he will now advance to Phase B — constructing, testing and launching his CubeSat on a high-altitude balloon in May 2025.

“We are incredibly proud of Joseph’s ambition and hard work,” Karin Paquin, sixth- through eighth-grade science teacher at St. John’s Catholic School, said in a prepared release. “His accomplishments demonstrate how students, even at the middle school level, can contribute meaningfully to space science and engineering. He has taken full ownership of both his CubeSat project and the microgravity research, showing a level of dedication and problem-solving that is truly inspiring.”

Beyond his CubeSat project, Stratman, along with fellow eighth graders Parker Griset and Chloe Charbonneau, has been conducting microgravity research in collaboration with Dr. Alvaro Romero-Calvo, an assistant professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Their experiment focuses on phase separation in microgravity, a critical process for spacecraft fuel management, water purification and life support systems. Paquin will fly this experiment aboard a Zero-G Corporation microgravity flight in May.

Stratman’s partnership with Georgia Tech and his research have been made possible through Space for Teachers, an initiative that provides students and educators with real-world space research experiences.