Year: 2024
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: SPECTRE -the Student-run Program for Exoatmospheric Collecting Technologies and RocketExperiment, is a sounding rocket experiment in NASA's Student Launch Program.Electrical and computer engineering seniors have worked on the flight hardware as a continuing capstone design project for five semesters, as part of an interdisciplinary student project team.Students have faced rich technical problems and unique project management challenges arising from the multi-team, multi-semester nature of this senior design effort.The need to interface regularly with other students, multiple faculty, staff engineers, and NASA review teams injected realworld pressures into the design course.This paper discusses the structure of the capstone course, the SPECTRE technical goals, and team experiences managing this complex evolutionary design problem.Substantial extended design can be successfully attempted within a capstone course if management continuity is maintained and if student teams develop effective communications and provide good engineering documentation for their successors.
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--7947
Author: Michael Ruane
Institution: Boston University
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2615563131