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威尼斯人app下载’s Student Rocket Design Team launched the first Mustang rocket from 美国航天港. The launch of the Mustang, the largest rocket ever attempted by NMT’s program, culminated 15 months of design and construction work for the team.

The rocketry team developed the Mustang 6A in collaboration with White Sands 研究 and Developers, LLC (http://www.wsrds.com), an aerospace company based in Las Cruces. Tech’s Mechanical Engineering department chair, Dr. Andrei Zagrai, had long realized that the relationship between academia and industry has the highest potential to advance NMT火箭计划.  

“WSRD and NMT have been nurturing just such a relationship for five years and through three launches,” Zagrai said. “The Mustang rocket was born thanks to this partnership.”

Dan Hicks, CEO of 美国航天港, said, “We are proud of the 威尼斯人app下载 team and its student members for their recent launch effort on November 4 at Spaceport 美国. We are pleased to work with these fine examples of the next generation of space industry engineers and scientists.”

Design of the Mustang’s outer mold line (OML), or its external shape, began in WSRD’s laboratory in the summer of 2016. The primary design goal was to develop an OML with a roomy payload section that could be scaled geometrically in sizes ranging from 2- to 18-inch in diameter and would be dynamically stable at speeds from low subsonic 到6马赫.

This year’s team leads are Aaron Misla and Connor Deuschle and last year’s team leads were Joachim Lohn-Jaramillo and Gabriel Montoya. Rocket team members over the past three semesters include Edgar Adomson, Joshua Berson, Mitchell Ching, Luis Cuenca, Ryan Garcia, Tanner Graham, Dylan Johnston, Francisco Koerdell-Sanchez, James Nolan, Dylan Purcell, James Ritter, Alejandro Rodriguez, John Sanchez, Nico Seamons, Wesley Small, Andrew Wanchek, and sophomore volunteer Calla Lang.

When the fall 2016 semester started, Dr. 保罗T. Jaramillo of WSRD presented the Mustang to the NMT Rocket Team as a design methodology that could eventually make it all the 太空之路. The first step would be fabrication of the six-inch diameter, 10-foot tall version of the Mustang, which would be the largest rocket ever attempted by NMT’s 火箭计划. The Mechanical Engineering faculty also saw the Mustang as a path to enhance NMT 研究 opportunities with a platform capable of hosting cutting-edge 研究. Subsystem designs began in earnest in the fall of 2016. 它最终在 this latest successful launch.

While both of the previous two launches received high praised from the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA), this team reached new levels of safety, proficiency, adherence to schedule, and professionalism throughout the launch process.

The team arrived on site at 3 a.m. and immediately began assembling the rocket and mounting it on the launch pad. The launch occurred at 7:35 a.m.，接下来是四分钟 delay to wait for a break in the cloud cover.

“This mission took enormous preparation by WSRD’s launch crew and the NMT rocket team,” Dr. Christina Lohn, WSRD’s CEO said. “But it really paid off with a smooth operation under changing weather conditions.”

Despite a textbook ignition and clean bright plume, the Mustang did not reach its intended apogee of 24,000 feet. However, the number of objectives achieved was astonishing. Early analysis indicates that every subsystem designed and built by the students performed nominally, including recovery of the payload bay, which was intact.

Subsystems included several innovative elements including a non-pyrotechnic separation system and a non-pyrotechnic main parachute recovery system

Lohn presented the team members and faculty advisor Dr. Michael Hargather with a mission patch commemorating the Mustang 6A inaugural mission. Dr. 朱莉·福特，克里斯·兰利， and Jim Ruff comprise the rest of the faculty members advising the team.