2020-2021 NASA Student Launch Competition

For the 2020-2021 NASA Student Launch Competition, I served as Launch Vehicle Lead on the NUSTARS (Northwestern University Space Technology & Rocketry Society) rocket team. The competition involved designing and building a high-powered rocket and a lower power subscale version of this rocket which were used in a competition against other universities.

By the end of the competition, the rocket was succesfully launched and recovered twice, and reached an altitude of around 6000 feet. An in depth report on the design of the rocket and its payload can be found here: Critical Design Review Report

An image of the core team members (I’m the first to the right of the rocket) on the lauch pad as well as a video of the launch can be seen below.

Design & Construction

As launch vehicle lead, I led the design and construction of the launch vehicle which utilized various carbon fiber manufacturing techniques such as filament winding, vacuum bagging, and hand-layups. This rocket was the first in the history of the NUSTARS club to make all airframe components entirely in-house.

The video below shows the carbon fiber filament winding machine in action as it winds a section of airframe for our sub-scale launch vehicle. And the completed subscale launch vehicle is shown as well.

Additional Images