The NASA Student Launch Challenge is a collegiate challenge where colleges compete under the rules of the challenge. However, the program also accepts high school teams that have shown that they have the ability to compete with college-level teams. Our team was one of sixteen high school teams selected for the challenge. As a results, we got to work with NASA for a year to simulate, build, test, and fly a rocket at NASA’s Huntsville Facility. For full documentation of the project, click here
Modeling and Simulation
The first step in the process was designing and building the rocket. This involved choosing what materials to use, what size different parts of the rocket should be, and other key design decisions. Justification for all these decisions can be found in the PDR in our documentation. The initial models are below:
Initial Design of the Avionics Bay
Initial model of the rocket on rocksim
Simulation Results
Subscale Testing
The next step was subscale testing, which involved building a scaled-down replica of the rocket and testing systems that might fail and calculating the drag coefficient for the full-scale rocket. Full documentation for the subscale can be found in the CDR in our documentation. A video of the subscale flight can be found here.
Data from Subscale Launch
Full-Scale Launch
The final step was the full-scale launch. Documentation for this is included in the FRR and PLAR in our documentation. A video of the full-scale launch can be found here (starts at 1:12:56):
Getting Interviewed by NASA