ACES: Aerospace Catalyst Experiences for Students

ACES Main Documents Images Groups News Flight Info Q & A Links 

ACES-01 Successfully Launched and Recovered May 21, 2003

We would like to thank Victor Davison, Randall Henderson, Scott Hadley, Don Bunt, John Hobbie, Marty Crabill, Paul Brasfield, Fred Perrin, Michelle Johnson, Bettie, Furman, Glen Gusa, Bill Stepp and Danny Ball at the National Scientific Balloon Facility for hosting our group and providing support both prior to and during flight operations.   In addition, members of the Baton Rouge Amateur Radio Club (Chris Dore, Justin Pauler) and the Palestine / Anderson County Amateur Radio Club (Jack Coleman) provided important communication, tracking and internet relay services during the flight and recovery.

A Student Satellite Project of the Louisiana Space Consortium

The ACES Project is a one-year Workforce Development pilot program that exposes undergraduate students to aspects of the aerospace project life cycle including design, fabrication, integration, testing and flight, while providing real experiences in project management and team coordination. During the 2002-03 academic year, students meet Tuesday and Thursday nights for lectures and hands-on bench work. 

Fifteen students from LSU and Southern are organized into five teams, each designing and building two devices: a CricketSat (to learn circuitry and soldering skills and to measure temperature profiles of an “alien planet” around campus) and a CanSat payload (to fly to 80,000 ft in altitude aboard a scientific sounding balloon.) in mid-May 2003 at the National Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas.  The scientific goals for the teams are to measure: ultraviolet radiation, temperature and pressure of outside air, flux of cosmic rays, ozone concentration, Infrared radiation, and the characteristics of the Earth’s magnetic field.

ACES resulted from a successful LaSPACE proposal to the Space Grant Workforce Augmentation Competition, tapping additional funds provided by Congress to Space Grant. Influencing the enrollment, motivation and retention of university-level students in fields such as science, math and engineering is key to populating the workforce “pipeline.”

 

Projects like ACES complement other Space Grant workforce development activities such as scholarships, fellowships, mentored research awards, and educational outreach.  These programs offer new opportunities for Louisiana students.

 

Across America, Space Grant students are learning from the ground up--literally--by designing, building, flying and operating a broad range of spacecraft. Students come with an interest in Space, but with different levels of skill, knowledge, and experience. Missions of growing complexity provide opportunities to acquire baseline skills and then to build on them. We call this strategy "crawl", "walk", "run" and "fly!". Our goal is to make aerospace history and send the first student-built satellites to Mars.

http://ssp.arizona.edu/sgsatellites/programs.shtml

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