MIT team wins grand prize at NASA’s First Nations Launch High-Power Rocket Competition

The members of the MIT First Nations Launch staff had by no means constructed a drone earlier than once they confronted the 2024 NASA First Nations Launch High-Power Rocket Competition. This yr’s problem invited groups to design, construct, and launch a high-power rocket carrying a scientific payload that deploys mid-air and safely returns to the bottom, integrating Indigenous methodologies.

The eight-student staff of all Indigenous college students earned the compatition’s grand prize, in addition to first place within the written portion.

Deploying a drone from a rocket

Constructing even the only drone calls for exact calculations of weight, energy, and performance. However this drone had additional layers of complexity. It wanted to fold contained in the 7.5-inch diameter rocket and deploy to a full 16 x 16-inch configuration. Workforce captain and rising junior Hailey Polson explains: “The arms of the drone, which maintain the propellers, must lock in place. As soon as it unfolds, you do not need it to re-fold whilst you’re attempting to fly it round. Subsequently, you have to have some form of locking mechanism, in addition to a mechanism to make sure it extends and unfolds correctly.”

Deploying the drone from the rocket introduced a big problem. The competitors required that the drone’s separation from the rocket couldn’t depend on gravity. To make sure profitable deployment, the scholars deliberate to make use of a black powder cost to push the drone from an inside rail, however that they had no prior expertise testing explosives to see if it will work as supposed. So, the staff enlisted the experience of their pals from the MIT Rocket Team, who helped conduct black powder testing within the MIT blast chamber.

Regardless of all these difficulties, the staff determined to rise to the challenges of the competitors but once more by designing their very own parachute launch mechanism, whereas many groups opted for industrial ones. They used an Arduino controller, a servo, and a particular snap shackle. “We examined round 15 totally different ones as a result of it’s fairly troublesome to seek out one thing {that a} servo motor can simply pull and truly launch within the appropriate approach,” Polson says.

As soon as the parachute is launched, the drone should be piloted to a secure touchdown. Nicole McGaa ’24 and second-year pupil Alex Zhindon-Romero took the FAA Half 107 drone pilot examination so they might legally pilot the drone.

Some great benefits of an all-indigenous staff

In accordance with a 2021 report from the U.S. Nationwide Science Basis, Native Individuals shaped solely 0.6 % of the STEM workforce.

Polson grew up on the Cherokee Nation Reservation of Claremore, Oklahoma, the place she loved being surrounded by different individuals in her tribe and celebrating her wealthy tradition. “I need to set an instance for different individuals from my background that they’ll attend MIT, be a rocket scientist, and do principally something they need and nonetheless really feel linked to their group.”

Polson deliberate to hitch an Edgerton Heart construct staff when she got here to MIT, “however I by no means imagined there can be sufficient curiosity for an all-Indigenous construct staff,” she says. “It is particular as a result of any construct staff kinds a novel bond between the members and fosters a fantastic sense of group. Nevertheless, having that additional layer of shared values, aspirations, and backgrounds has actually gone a good distance in driving us in direction of the identical targets. We aren’t solely dedicated to excellence in engineering and reaching the duties they ask of us, but in addition to serving to one another and discovering excellence inside ourselves as engineers.”

The MIT First Nations Launch staff was shaped in 2022 to take part within the annual NASA Artemis pupil problem. The staff makes use of Indigenous methodologies and buildings to study and perceive how engineers can form the world by aerospace and past. Polson describes their Indigenous method as “prioritizing each the human facet, specializing in the interactions between our teammates, and ensuring that they’re getting all the things they want out of this, in addition to on the impacts past that, with outreach, training, and the surroundings.”

Professor J. Kim Vandiver, director of the Edgerton Heart, says, “We non-Native American engineers have loads to study from these college students. I’m notably drawn to their extra holistic view of life and the interconnectedness of all the things we do and the world during which we dwell.”