NCSSM in the News

 

The Herald-Sun
By: Wes Platt

wplatt@heraldsun.com | 919-419-6684

 

DURHAM – Last year, the Durham Area Rocketry Team took a shot at winning a small-scale NASA contract in the Student Launch Initiative program.

 

That project didn’t fly.

 

This year, faced with an even shorter deadline but equipped with wisdom gained from their last experience, the students from Jordan High, Durham School of the Arts and North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics developed a new proposal for this year’s SLI.
 

And it’s taking off.

 

On Thursday, they won NASA’s approval to develop a rocket that could be launched along with rockets from 20 other teams around the United States at the Marshall Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., in April 2013.

 

“For me, for the students, it’s a great opportunity,” said Jeff LaCosse, a science teacher at Jordan who also serves as DART team administrator. “I wanted students to have a chance to see what it’s like to work in an engineering and science environment on a large project. They have a contract; they have deliverables. It’s almost exactly how NASA runs a project with a full-sized contract, with budgets and schedules and actual deadlines.”

 

NASA spokeswoman Julie Clift, who works with the student launch programs in Huntsville, said that 70 teams throughout the country submitted proposals. A total of 57 were selected, she said. Of those, 21 were informal groups, middle schools and high schools, while the rest came from colleges and universities.

 

The DART team is one |of only two North Carolina teams selected this year. The other is based in Charlotte.

 

“Durham had a very well-written proposal,” Clift said.

 

The project involves four phases, starting with the preliminary design review, which was just finished. The students had a video conference with NASA engineers, who gave DART notes on their proposal for the rocket and the associated experiment.

 

Next, the students move toward critical design review, making changes to the project based on those notes from NASA. The design should be final sometime in mid-January, LaCosse said.

 

Then, once NASA gives final sign-off on the design, DART members can build their full-scale rocket. After the full-scale prototype is built and tested, NASA holds a flight readiness review meeting. That’s when the space agency would be expected to give approval for students to bring their rockets to streak a mile high across the Alabama sky.

 

The DART experiment will involve the simultaneous launching of 16 rockets, some using electronic altimeters while others carry electronic accelerometers and GPS trackers, all with the goal of testing the accuracy of the altimeters.

“We want to see how close they read to each other,” LaCosse said. “We want to know if they all measure the same or if there’s a big spread. No one has really done this to see how precise the numbers are.”

 

Within the next few weeks, the DART team will launch a half-scale version of their rocket from a field in Bahama. When they get to the full-scale rocket, though, they’ll need ample airspace because that one will shoot about 6,000 feet high, LaCosse said. So they’ll go to a field in Bayboro that’s used specifically for projects like this.

 

The NASA contract pays a few thousand dollars, which primarily covers the cost of designing, building and testing the rockets. Some may be available for travel, and some DART students may have special grants to underwrite their trip to Alabama, but, LaCosse said, “some don’t have that option.”

 

He’s hoping that local companies might sponsor the team to make sure that all members can make the trip. For information, contact LaCosse at jeffrey.lacosse@dpsnc.net.

 

©The Herald-Sun