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redOrbit exclusive: NASA’s student launch blasts off
Shayne Jacopian for redOrbit.com – @ShayneJacopian
Yesterday, more than 30 middle school, high school, and college teams began competing in the fifteenth annual NASA Student Launch event near the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, which will last until this evening.
We had an opportunity to talk with a couple of the event’s organizers about what goes on at this competition.
“We have different challenges every year—participants either have to launch to a different altitude or use a different payload,” says Dr. Katie Wallace, program manager for the Student Launch event. “This year we’re working with Centennial Challenges, and there’s an autonomous ground equipment (robotics) challenge associated with it.”
Real life problem solving
Dr. Wallace says that events like these are designed to get students out of the classroom and into real-life settings where they can apply what they learn in the classroom.
“They have to design something, present it to NASA engineers in design reviews and flight readiness reviews, and they have to pass all kinds of safety requirements, so they see how [engineering] really works in the real world.”
While Student Launch is primarily focused on getting students to develop and launch rockets, Centennial Challenges’ role is to encourage college and university students to develop solutions to problems that would be encountered on Mars through the Mini-Mars Ascent Vehicle (Mini-MAV) and Maxi-Mars Ascent Vehicle (Maxi-MAV) challenges.
In addition to creating and launching a rocket and ejecting a payload, participants in the Mini-MAV division must build and program an autonomous system that will grasp and pick up a payload, put it in the rocket, close the rocket, deploy it to a vertical stage, and insert the rocket’s igniter before launching the rocket and ejecting the payload when it descends to 1,000 feet. Think that’s a lot? The Maxi-MAV division has even more autonomy requirements.
Not only is this a great resource for young engineers, but it’s an excellent resource for NASA, as well.
Great resource for NASA
“The Student Launch program has a great resource and a great foundation for us to be able to take advantage of these young engineers and be able to advance technologies that are of need to NASA,” said Sam Ortega, the program manager for Centennial Challenges.
He explains that oftentimes, innovation can come from places you wouldn’t normally expect to find it.
“The Centennial Challenges program was started in 2005 when the Wright brother’s had their centennial anniversary of flight,” Ortega says. “You had two bicycle makers creating the airplane. That was the most unlikely source of a solution to that problem that you could ever have expected, and that’s exactly what we seek in our competitions.”
NASA clearly values this resource—the top three MAV teams will share in $50,000 of prize money.
Ortega points out the atmosphere of camaraderie at the event—while everyone is competing, they’re also working towards a common goal.
He cites an example of a team whose rocket was irreparably damaged just a couple of days before the event, rendering them unable to compete. “They show up anyway with this rocket in pieces, and they’re meeting with all the other teams, and talking to them about how they built their rockets,” Ortega says. “To me that’s the neat thing about the competitive spirit with Student Launch and Centennial Challenges. Once they’ve gotten here and developed the technology, they all want to see how everyone else did it.”
“They all want to share what they’ve come up with,” Dr. Wallace adds. “There’s no secrecy at all.”
Student Launch began at 10am yesterday, and will continue until 5pm tonight.
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Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113369494/redorbit-exclusive-nasas-student-launch-blasts-off-041115/
