Rocket club continuing partnership with NASA

The rocket club has been accepted for the opportunity to present a proposal to work with NASA. According to adviser Zeb Nicholson, to contact NASA, the students “had to compete in a national contest and placed top 25 in the country.” The next step for the team is writing their proposal. Nicholson said they are currently working on a 40- to 50-page report.

Junior Elliot Purdum said, “Our current project is to fly a drone after landing. Our objective is to fly, take images of the area and to navigate autonomously”

 “Part of the rules for NASA is that it has to be 100 percent student-led except for handling of the explosives,” senior Sean Radke said.

There are four subgroups of the NASA project: payloads, fundraising, vehicle and outreach. Senior Torin Brown said, “Payloads is in charge of designing the experiments. Last year was the cameras, so they designed the housing for the cameras, how the batteries are gonna connect and like the retention system to make sure when the rocket goes up, the payload also doesn’t go the opposite direction.” 

Fundraising helps to raise money for the expense of the rockets. “Each one of the rockets costs anywhere from three to five grand to build, and every time you launch it, that’s about another $200,” Brown said.

He said, “Vehicle is in charge of designing the rocket itself, so almost everything you see on the outside as far as design. They choose like fin shape, height, diameter of the rocket.”

Outreach is in charge of social media and engaging elementaries and youth groups. Brown said, “Last year we gauged like over 250 kids in a little activity where you launch paper rockets and kind of explained how rockets worked.”