Design and Performance of a High-Powered Rocket for the 2022 NASA Student Launch Competition
Document Type
Oral Presentation
Event Website
https://source2022.sched.com/
Start Date
18-5-2022
End Date
18-5-2022
Keywords
Rocket, NASA, Student Launch, STEM engagement, Outreach
Abstract
Wildcat Rocketry is the team of 9 Central Washington University (CWU) students that competed in the 2022 NASA Student Launch (NASA SL) competition. The NASA SL is a yearly competition, spanning 9 months with new mission criteria every year. This year, the mission criteria was to simulate an Earth-to-foreign-body transfer, where a rocket would launch and land in on an unexplored celestial body, and upon landing, be able to autonomously detect its location and report that figure back to mission control. GPS and magnetometers were not allowed for this competition, since they would only work with detailed information about the target body. Wildcat Rocketry settled on a method we dubbed "A Visual Analysis Tracking of A Rocket" (AVATAR), which would take pictures and, based off of a scaling factor and known position of a target object, provide the landing location of the airframe. The Wildcat Rocketry team has built a 105 inch tall rocket, powered by a K1050W-PS motor allowing it to fly to a height of greater than 4,000 ft. before safely returning to the ground to be recovered and used again. This competition has challenged the students of Wildcat Rocketry in the engineering process, community engagement, and teamwork, making us better academics and communicators, and teaching us critical skills in project management and problem solving in the process.
Recommended Citation
Horne, Dominic; Puhrmann, Makaila; Reinhardt, Henry; Veitas, Al; and Zarkos, Jessica, "Design and Performance of a High-Powered Rocket for the 2022 NASA Student Launch Competition" (2022). Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). 54.
https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/source/2022/COTS/54
Department/Program
Physics
Additional Mentoring Department
Physics
Additional Mentoring Department
William O. Douglas Honors College
Design and Performance of a High-Powered Rocket for the 2022 NASA Student Launch Competition
Wildcat Rocketry is the team of 9 Central Washington University (CWU) students that competed in the 2022 NASA Student Launch (NASA SL) competition. The NASA SL is a yearly competition, spanning 9 months with new mission criteria every year. This year, the mission criteria was to simulate an Earth-to-foreign-body transfer, where a rocket would launch and land in on an unexplored celestial body, and upon landing, be able to autonomously detect its location and report that figure back to mission control. GPS and magnetometers were not allowed for this competition, since they would only work with detailed information about the target body. Wildcat Rocketry settled on a method we dubbed "A Visual Analysis Tracking of A Rocket" (AVATAR), which would take pictures and, based off of a scaling factor and known position of a target object, provide the landing location of the airframe. The Wildcat Rocketry team has built a 105 inch tall rocket, powered by a K1050W-PS motor allowing it to fly to a height of greater than 4,000 ft. before safely returning to the ground to be recovered and used again. This competition has challenged the students of Wildcat Rocketry in the engineering process, community engagement, and teamwork, making us better academics and communicators, and teaching us critical skills in project management and problem solving in the process.
https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/source/2022/COTS/54
Faculty Mentor(s)
Darci Snowden