A team of scientists from the University of Massachusetts Lowell will be watching hopefully Saturday as a rocket takes off carrying a university-built device bound for the International Space Station.

The device will travel on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Once it reaches the space station, it will collect observations that could help build scientists’ understanding of the highest levels of the atmosphere.

Researchers say the study of the ionosphere has implications for satellite communications and GPS navigation. Variations in the ionosphere — and its interactions with radiation from solar storms — can have a significant effect on technology on Earth.

Physics professor Supriya Chakrabarti, who is leading the project, said the research and other projects like it also provide a better understanding of the complex relationships between Earth, sun, and sky.

“We’re trying to understand how the atmosphere and the ionosphere and the sun are all interrelated, and how they change,’’ he said.

Susanna Finn, a research scientist working on the project at the Lowell Center for Space Science and Technology, said the ionosphere is made up of many different components rife with “changes of density, irregularities, bubbles.’’

The composition of the ionosphere can affect Earth’s exposure to space weather, so scientists are working to better understand its intricacies.

The equipment, which will be mounted to the space station for up to two years, will take images that will show the atoms and molecules in different parts of the ionosphere. The observations will add to efforts by other satellites and from Earth-based radar.

The equipment — it’s called the Limb-Imaging Ionospheric and Thermospheric Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrograph, or LITES — has been in space three times before on rockets.

It has been substantially remade for the purposes of this trip, however, and Finn said she expects to get a special thrill as she watches her handiwork travel into space.

Of course, both she and Chakrabarti are most excited for what will happen 10 days later, if all goes well: LITES will begin to send data back to Earth for study.

“This is where we train our future space explorers, and the exciting part is that not many people could say, ‘I built something that went to space and it returned this great result,’ ’’ Chakrabarti said.

Andy Rosen can be reached at andrew.rosen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @andyrosen.