Student Rocket Program

Overview

ARES Institute is developing a program to involve primary and secondary level students in the design, construction and flight of rockets and payloads. Younger students begin by studying the basics of rockets and spaceflight. In doing so, students construct their own model rockets in teams, under direction of their instructor. The culmination of this project is the successful (hopefully) flight of their rockets. In higher level grades students will become engaged in the selection, design, and operation of a scientific payload onboard a real sounding rocket. In the process, they begin to learn and understand what is involved in real space missions, from mission selection to design and operation, and factors such as teamwork, cooperation, and leadership.

Goals of the Program

• To stimulate interest in science, math and technology in students in grades 6 through 16 and make it more exciting
• Encourage students and the public in future aerospace pursuits
• Promote and teach cooperative learning, teamwork, leadership and problem-solving skills
• Apply the skills and interests developed in the program to all areas and subjects of learning

Learning From Others

The Student Rocket Program is patterned after several other similar programs in the nation. Most notable is the Rockets for Schools program located in states in the upper midwest (Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa). Rockets for Schools began in 1996 and involved 240 students. At this event, a Super-Loki Dart sounding rocket was launched from Sheboygan, WI. carrying a payload developed by a team of professionals and students from University of Wisconson at Madison's engineering school. There have been four more events held since 1996 and elementary school students have participated in model rocket-building classes and launch.

We have also looked at other programs, including the Student Experimental Payloads program and the Student Projects Involving Rocket Investigation Techniques (SPIRIT) from Pennsylvania State University, which is part of NASA's Student Launch Program. According to the SPIRIT website: "SPIRIT provides the opportunity for students from a wide range of educational backgrounds to gain hands-on experience in the design and fabrication of a research sounding rocket. The 30-month project, part of the NASA Student Launch Program, enhances classroom experience while emphasizing creativity, collaborative learning and time management skills. Members of SPIRIT are constructing a rocket that will deploy experiments to measure temperature in the mesosphere, the middle layer of the atmosphere."

The Student Launch Program (SLP) "is intended to broaden undergraduate bachelor through master degree educational opportunities using experiments built by students and flown by NASA on suborbital sounding rockets and scientific balloons. The program offers students an opportunity to work on a reasonably complex project from its inception through to its end in a time frame tenable within their academic careers. The program, initiated in 1993, provides practical experience in all aspects of planning, building, and flying a space science experiment. The projects involve a wide variety of academic disciplines to achieve the end-to-end management, publicity, design and fabrication, test and calibration, flight operations, data analysis, and the publication of final reports and/or scientific papers. The program is meant to be equally relevant to students in academic fields as diverse as science and engineering, education, business administration, industrial management, and/or public relations."

It is our desire to bring a program combining aspects of those mentioned above to the state of Florida and bring to in-state students the benefits that students in other states have experienced. In doing so, we also hope to benefit industry and small business in the short-term and more importantly over the long-term.