A Pilot Sounding Rocket Project Utilizing Student Labor

by Sue A. Johnson, Colorado Space Grant Consortium, Boulder, United States,



Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Engineering, Construction, and Operations in Space III

Abstract:

Space science experiments have been accomplished by suborbital, sounding rockets for over forty years. This inexpensive, reliable, and unique launch platform provides the basis of a state-wide student rocket research project at the Colorado Space Grant Consortium. The payload, NASA number 30.040 UP, will launch from Wallops Island, Virginia at the end of the summer of 1992. The rocket will carry support systems as well as remote sensing instruments to determine ozone density variations with altitude, using Rayleigh scattering measurements. The payload is being managed, designed, built and tested by graduate and undergraduate students at six of the member colleges and universities of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium using a mixture of surplus components and original designs. The organization that has evolved in this project, the progress, the advantages, and the challenges of student developed space payloads in this pilot student research project will be discussed.

Subject Headings: Students | Payloads | Aerospace engineering | Project management | Engineering education | Space exploration | Sensors and sensing | United States | Colorado | Virginia

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