MAVEN is not the only satellite to launch into space this week, as it is now joined by an orbiter designed and built by high school students, the Washington Post reported.

The satellite took off on Tuesday night at 8:15 on the back of a Minotaur I rocket from NASA's Wallops Island facility in Virginia. Students of Science and Technology at Thomas Jefferson High School developed the first satellite, known as TJCubeSat, designed by high school students to go into space.

The satellite took seven years and more than 50 students to complete and it was one of 29 orbiters the Minotaur I rocket took into space.

TJCubeSat will receive messages the students send to it in space and rebroadcast the message around the globe on ham radio. They equipped the satellite with a voice synthesizer that will be able to interpret words phonetically. With some minor work on the word structuring, the messages can be distributed in any language.

"A generation ago, this was really science fiction," Rohan Punnoose, one of the students on the project, told WJLA. "It's just an unbelievable experience to be part of history... doing something no one has ever done before."

Carlos Niederstrasser, a systems engineer at Orbital Science, said this feat is no small accomplishment for the students involved.

"Up until about 20 years ago, only governments would have been able to do it," he said. "About 10 years ago, universities started to get involved and now you have the ability of high schools very early in their career able to get their hands dirty working on a real space program that's going to go into space orbit."

Adam Kemp, a Jefferson High teacher advising the project, said the goal for the satellite is to allow schools around the world communication access to the orbiter.

"The idea is that schools around the world can have a limited ground station and be certified on amateur frequencies to be able to communicate to the satellite and back down," he said.

The program could be a precursor to others of its kind, which will open a door to young students aspiring to one day be space scientists or astronauts.

"Whatever I send up as a text message, it will speak down and anybody around the world can tune into the right frequency and hear it being spoken down from space," Punnoose said. "Hopefully, we're just the first of many, many high schools that will make space accessible to people and inspire people around the world."