Smithtown West student collaborates with NASA to unlock mysteries of Jupiter

Equipped with a laptop, antenna, cables and connectors on a football field, a Smithtown High School West sophomore has set his sights on boldly exploring where no one has gone before — Jupiter.

Nicholas Cardi, 15 — standing in the middle of a fenced-off area of the school's football field as he looked up at the sky — said he was thrilled to be able to connect with the infinite vastness, mysteries and wonders of the worlds above him.

Cardi is collaborating on a project with NASA called Radio JOVE. The program lets students, teachers and amateur scientists build simple and inexpensive radio telescopes to observe natural radio emissions from Jupiter, the sun and the galaxy.

“The coolest part about this is that I get to connect with something that is almost incomprehensible,” Cardi said in a recent Newsday interview. “Beyond Jupiter, there are radio signals that are coming from the infinite galaxy beyond … these signals are coming from the beginning of the universe, and they’re just arriving here now to be transmitted to my telescope and into my computer so that it becomes … a digital representation of what is the universe.”

Cardi, an enthusiastic science student, said he's long been fascinated with the stars and space.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been looking up at the sky and the moon and the stars, and as I got older, I got a chance to learn more about them,” he said. “My fascination only grew. Just like there’s an infinite amount of space, there’s an infinite amount of things to learn about our universe.”

Help from teacher and community

When Cardi enrolled in a science research class at school, he asked to conduct an astronomy-related project. But astronomy projects are difficult for high school students, he said, because of the high costs of equipment.

Brian Snyder, the school's science research coordinator, looked into possibilities and came across the Radio JOVE project. The project excited Cardi because it provides the framework to build a scientific instrument to gather data from space, and there is a community of students and amateur scientists to guide his research.

“It’s definitely comforting … having the community aspect; it contributes to the citizen science aspect of it,” Cardi said.

Cardi spent roughly a year building the telescope. He learned how to solder and use a power drill; put stakes in the ground outside the high school field; and occasionally got help from students in the school’s physics and astronomy club who helped him build the telescope.

Project tailored to students

The Radio JOVE project is tailored to high school students and citizen scientists.

It focuses on Jupiter and solar radio emissions to better understand their magnetic fields and plasma environments. There were 228 registered Radio JOVE users worldwide as of October 2023, according to the project's website.

Cardi has started gathering data measuring the strength of radio signals coming from Jupiter.

Specifically, he is interested in studying how the different moons of Jupiter can interact with the magnetospheres — defined by NASA as the region around a planet dominated by the planet's magnetic field — something Snyder said has not been done through the project at the high school level.

“Plenty of work has been done on the sun, less work has been done on Jupiter, especially at the high school level, and Nick is interpreting those results,” Snyder said in a Newsday interview.

Cardi said he would also like to use radio waves to examine if there’s volcanic activity on Europa, one of the icy moons of Jupiter — which could indicate there is a habitable environment for life on that moon.

Snyder hopes that eventually, other students will be able to use the telescope.

Smithtown High School West Principal William Holl said the school is proud of Cardi's work under Snyder's guidance. 

“This project demonstrates a remarkable level of curiosity, discipline and scientific talent,” Holl told Newsday recently. “It’s inspiring to see a young scientist like Nicholas push the boundaries of what’s possible at the high school level, and we couldn’t be more excited to support his journey.”