It’s been an exciting couple of weeks for former Lacombe Composite High School student Charles Nokes, after him and his team at the University of Alberta launched the province's first satellite (Ex-Alta 1) into space April 18.

With some time to reflect on the accomplishment, Nokes said his time spent at Lacombe Comp, went a long way in his success.

Nokes is a co-founder of the school’s EcoVision club, where his love for science grew.

“My dad is a mechanical engineer so I’ve always been interested in kind of ‘hands on’ projects and the design aspect of things, but EcoVison was really where I got to actually learn how to go about doing these kinds of things,” said Nokes.

Eco-Vision is a club for student leaders interested in environmental change and some of their work includes greenhouse projects and solar panel systems.

During the last couple of weeks, Nokes has done numerous interviews with various media outlets across the country.

The project took three years of hard work and seeing all the attention it’s getting made it worth it, said Nokes.

“We’ve been working on it for so long and there have been several really key milestones where we’ve had media coverage, but it never got to the point where we were live on national television.”

“Basically the whole country was tuned in at some point.”

The objective of the satellite is to study space weather and its effects on things such as the Northern Lights through the sun’s energy and its interaction with the earth's magnetic field.