SPIRIT II lift-off culminates three years of work for engineering students

SPIRIT II lift-off culminates three years of work for engineering students

Wallops Island, Va. -- A group of 17 Penn State students has traveled to the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on the eastern shore of Virginia to oversee the launch of the second SPIRIT rocket.

SPIRIT II, a culmination of three years’ work for these engineering students, was launched 120 kilometers into the sky on Oct. 3 to measure winds in the Earth’s mesosphere.

In collaboration with a smaller group of Clemson University physics students under the direction of Miguel Larsen, the students designed and built the entire SPIRIT II payload. In addition to the experiments, the students have built the payload structure, power systems and telemetry systems in their entirety.

“The students have poured heart and soul into this payload,” said co-investigator Timothy Wheeler, research assistant in Penn State's College of Engineering.

The launch had been postponed twice in the past six months due to the war in Iraq and Hurricane Isabel.

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SPIRIT II from a Student Perspective
By Rob Siegel

There are many words that come to mind for us students working on the SPIRIT II project: hands-on, goal-oriented and rocket science are a few that describe our mission, while intensity, elation and team work describe our spirit.

The best part about the project is that the experience is unique for each person involved. I was lucky in the fact that I was able to see the project through its inception to the launch, which happened to make a great birthday present. When the project first started, I was a junior, so I had the background knowledge to participate in building a payload. At least I thought I did, but as our initial designs got underway I began to realize that constructing a successful rocket was way more complicated than it first appears. So many different pieces have to come together. The science instruments can work beautifully, but if the telemetry system doesn’t work correctly, none of the captured data ever makes it to the ground. If the payload structure (area where most of the electronics reside) isn’t planned well, fitting in all the desired electronics becomes impossible.

SPIRIT II started with a clean sheet of paper to design a useful and educational rocket system, but more than a thousand sheets of paper were needed to make sure all the subsystems could come together. Luckily, we had help at every turn. Several members of SPIRIT II, the first student-built rocket project at Penn State, were around to give some guidance, while all of the employees at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility were there to answer questions and offer advice from years of experience.

So my first few semesters on the project were humbling ones. I learned to sit back and listen to what more experienced people had to say, but at the same time I was never timid in presenting any new ideas that popped into my head.

After a few more semesters with the project, though, I found that my role with SPIRIT II had completely changed. I found myself no longer being the one with little experience, but the one that was offering advice. Sure, I had finished my bachelor’s degree and started graduate school, but I certainly was not the only one to follow this transformation. It seems projects like these breed leaders. You learn so much when you first join the project because you want to learn, you want to get your hands in there and start designing and building things. Then, after a while, you know enough to do some of the work, and you help develop what needs to be tackled next. Then, before you know it, you are the one of the few people left who has enough vision of a particular subsystem to lead the rest of the team members.

Looking at the SPIRIT II team as a whole, there is always an in-surge of young talent with a tremendous amount of energy and new ideas. There are always hard working team members, and there is always plenty of strong leadership. The faces and names might change, but the incredible atmosphere does not.

That atmosphere has grown even more intense and wonderful, now that we have launched. Everyone’s hard work, including many all-nighters, sacrificed spring breaks, and even missed classes (most of us don’t complain too much about the last one), paid off. We over came so many different obstacles to achieve our science goals including designing a nosecone transparent to RF signals, an inflatable sphere with an onboard GPS system, and a new method to deploy inflatable spheres, and all the while gaining great experience, team work, and leadership skills. Granted, we had our fair share of hiccups with launch delays and experiments that didn’t always work as intended, but that’s always part of a real world experience. It’s what makes projects like these worthwhile, there is no guarantee for success; you have to work hard and really test your abilities to get anywhere. When you finally end up with something physically, it is incredibly gratifying.

Every member of SPIRIT II will never forget the time and effort they contributed and the success we accomplished together. The best part about the whole experience, though, is that I know that future students will get the same opportunities I did when the newest rocket project, SPIRIT III, gets underway with plans for a 2006 launch from northern Norway. Anyone interested?

During the course of the SPIRIT II project, Rob Siegel earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Penn State in 2002. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University.

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View photos of the preparation for the launch of SPIRIT II at http://live.psu.edu/still_life/10_07_03_rocket/index.html

For more on the SPIRIT II program, visit http://spirit.ee.psu.edu/