Apply for student research opportunity with USIP

The Nebraska Engineering team, courtesy of Nebraska Today.
The Nebraska Engineering team, courtesy of Nebraska Today.

UNL’s USIP has been awarded a $200,000 grant to further develop a mechanism for deploying and retracting a boom to recover instruments and solar panels that are extended from a space vehicle.

In March of 2018 the USIP’s project design will be put on a NASA sub-orbital sounding rocket at Wallops Flight Facility to test the mechanism in a space environment.

USIP’s goal is expose students to how engineering teams work at NASA and other professional settings while working on a challenging project. Since the start of the project during the summer of 2016 we have been working closely with NASA representatives to bring concepts and ideas into reality. As of the spring semester of 2017 we have moved onto prototyping and testing with our preliminary design. We are looking for highly motivated engineers to join our team help get our project off the ground.

Currently, USIP has three sub-teams. Each team tackles a different aspect of the project, but still works closely together to develop a single design. Active members are expected to commit six hours a week to the USIP program.

USIP Sub Teams Electrical
• The electrical team is responsible for collecting, processing and storing sensor data during the launch. They must also program the controls for the boom mechanism for it to deploy, lock, retract and how to respond to any issues that may arise during its operation. They must also transmit and receive data to and from the payload in flight.

Systems
• Systems is responsible for building a solar panel simulate and housing that will be deployed by boom. Currently they are constructing and evaluating a test version of our solar simulate to determine what characteristics it will have and how it will affect the boom

Mechanical
• The mechanical team is developing much of the main structure and moving components of the deployment mechanism. They often work with 3D CAD programs, such as SolidWorks, to analyze components and determine the best means to meet the physical requirements of the project.

NOTE: Since this project works with proprietary information from NASA, membership is restricted to U.S. persons only.

Please submit applications to the mail box of Karen Stelling in W342 NH or by E-mail to Kstelling2@unl.edu