Last year, Capitol College launched its first Do-it-Yourself Satellite Workshop, open to middle and high school students. Though the camp was free of charge, enrollment was limited and the available spaces filled up quickly.
The event’s success prompted Capitol to double the numbers this summer. From July 7 to 11, students from as far away as North Carolina and Ohio drove up to Laurel for the chance to learn more about picosatellites and their potential applications.
Conceived by Angela Walters, chair of the Astronautical Engineering (AE) department at Capitol, this year the camp was run by AE professor Alex "Sandy" Antunes together with students Alexander Petrov, Amanda Raab and Ryan Schrenk.
Antunes provided the lectures, while the three Capitol students acted as the subject matter experts and mentors to the four build teams. Financial support for the three-day event came from the Maryland Space Grant Consortium, with Capitol contributing matching funds.
The program included science presentations, games and a trip to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The main focus, though, was on the student projects.
“It’s different than I thought it would be, in a good way,” said Katie Shields, a student at Bohemia Manor High School in Cecil County, Maryland. “It’s very hands-on.”
Shields and fellow camp participants came up with a variety of science questions that could be tested using tiny satellites launched via a tethered balloon. One team decided to study the effects of changing altitude on putty and glue. Another experimented with different kinds of rocket fuel. Still another wanted to see how air pressure at 300 feet affects the outer layer of an egg.
Practice in problem-solving
While the camp was designed to be fun, Antunes said, it also reinforced the fundamentals of systems engineering.
“The students had to figure out a way to achieve their goal while the clock ticks; they had just one day to build a workable payload. And they didn’t get extra ingredients – anything they didn’t tell us to buy that first night, they just didn’t have. If they were missing a primary component, they were missing a primary component.”
As in the real world, successful projects at the camp depended on teamwork, choosing the right scope, and being able to devise workarounds. “Sometimes they needed to come up with alternative approaches, or change the depth or complexity,” Antunes said.
Setting up shop at the college's chemistry lab, a team under Petrov's supervision blended potassium with sugar and then mixed the blend with de-ionized water. When the water was boiled off, what remained was a flammable compound that could be used as rocket fuel.
“It’s the same fuel mixture that was used in the movie October Sky,” explained team member Ethan Atkinson, from Research Triangle High School in Raleigh, NC.
One important feature of the camp was that it brought together students with a range of interests, said Petrov, who is serving as president of the college's rocketry club during the summer.
“We’re exposing different students in middle school and high school to systems engineering and we’re learning a lot from each other,” Petrov explained. “The students here have different backgrounds. Some have more of a computer science background, others more of a (hobby) rocketry background. It's a good experience for everyone to learn from each other.”
For Atkinson, the camp was a way to build on his existing pursuits. “The lectures are fun and informative. I get to goof off with rocket mixtures for free.”
3-D printers draw interest
Meanwhile, at the Astronautical Research Lab in the McGowan Building, a team from L.C. Bird High School in Chesterfield, MD was experimenting with a model created using one of the school's 3-D printers.
"We're in the pre-engineering program at L.C. Bird," said Ethan Revere. "We thought this would be a good opportunity to learn about satellites and a bit more about the aerospace industry."
For their workshop project, they decided to study the impact of altitude on 3-D printed models.
"What we’re specifically looking for is to see if it has any significant structural effects – if there’s any expansion if any trapped air is in it, if the change in pressure will have an effect on the structural stability, and we’ve put down a bunch of measurements on it," said team member Jackson Empey.
"We're very interested in 3-D printing," Empey said. “I personally think 3-D printers are going to be the future of production and manufacturing, so for me this is a particularly interesting aspect of the camp."
Top photo: workshop participants Aliya Adams (right) and Ethan Atkinson work on pipe-cutting.
Bottom: A tethered balloon carries one of the student projects.