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03/25/09 - Daedalus wins top prizes at AIAA Student Conference
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Region VI student conference was recently held in Long Beach, California. At the conference, students present their work in one of three categories: undergraduate individual competition, graduate individual competition, and a design team competition. All participants must complete a paper and present their work to a judging panel of AIAA and industry professionals. Winners from each category are awarded cash prizes and an all-expense paid trip for 1st place winners to present at the AIAA International Student Conference next January in Florida.
This AIAA student conference was attended by students from ASU, BYU, CSULB, ERAU, SDSU, SJSU, UCI, UCLA, USC, USU, and UW.
We are proud to announce that the Daedalus Astronautics team has won the 1st place award in the team category for their paper and presentation entitled: "Design of a N2O/HTPB Hybrid Rocket Motor Utilizing a Toroidal Aerospike Nozzle".
This is the second year in a row that Daedalus has won the top prize, and the third time in the past four years. Daedalus will therefore present their work again at the AIAA International Student Conference at the Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Orlando, Florida in January 2010.
The winning PowerPoint presentation can be found here. Sorry, the paper won't be uploaded because it will be published at the ASM conference next year just like last years paper.
Daedalus team presenters Jacob Dennis, Steven Shark, and Felipe Hernandez were responsible for the winning paper and presentation. All three are aerospace engineering seniors in the integrated BSE/MS 4+1 program. The research is based off of two Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative (FURI) projects currently being sponsored: one on hybrid rocket motors being investigated by Jacob Dennis and the other on aerospike nozzles by Steven Shark.
Brad Goodman also placed 2nd in the individual undergraduate category out of 12 presenters from across the West coast. Brad is a new Daedalus member and a junior in aerospace engineering. His paper and presentation entitled "Characterization of Solid Rocket Propellants through Crawford Strand Burner Testing" is also based on his own FURI project.
Brad's paper is uploaded and will be moved over the propulsion section under the Projects link once we finallly get around to uploaded that content. [edit: Brad's paper and presentation taken down since he was chosen to present his work at the 60th International Astronautical Congress in South Korea in October 2009]
We would like to thank Lenny Bucholz and Andre Magdelano from the MAE student machine shop for all of their help in the development and construction of the hybrid rocket motor, aerospike nozzle and combustion strand burner. All three of these projects are sponsored in part from Raytheon Missile Systems, Orbital Sciences, and the FURI program.
Congratulations to all of the winners!
It's also interesting to note that our website has been seeing some increased activity this semester. The following graph illustrates this increase. The peaks correlate to our Raytheon visit this January, our CDR and FRR submissions in February and March, and of course our recent press release.
Stay tuned for results from Daedalus' future launch competitions: the NASA USLI rocket competition next month in Huntsville, Alabama following our successful VCM test launch and the ESRA rocket competition in Utah this upcoming June.
~ James Villarreal; Project Manager