University of Colorado at Boulder Aerospace Engineering Senior Projects

Below is a list of this year's projects. Documents will be linked when they become available.

Final Report access may be requested from the Course Coordinator (jean.koster@colorado.edu)

CASTOR

The CASTOR team will develop an Engineering Design Unit (EDU) of a CubeSat bus capable of supporting the operations of a QB50 Program scientific payload.

DAYSTAR

The DayStar team will develop a prototype star tracking system capable of providing pointing knowledge to a diurnal, lighter-than-air platform. DayStar will improve on current attitude determination devices used on balloon payloads by providing daytime operational capabilities and an improved nighttime accuracy of 0.1 arcseconds RMS.

FENIX

Use fluid injection to develop supersonic exhaust on a Mini-Jet Engine as well as allow thrust vectoring for aircraft control.

ICECUBE

ICECUBE stands for "Investigation of Cryogenic Emissivity by CU and Ball Engineers". ICECUBE is a University of Colorado Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department senior project. The customer of the ICECUBE project is Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation. ICECUBE will design, build and validate a testbed to determine the cryogenic emissivity for a given surface and determine the uncertainty of the emissivity measurement.

IMPULSE

IMPULSE will create a test bed that will allow hub-motors to be tested for their ability to survive impulsive shocks. Hubmotors are susceptible to this form of shock due to the basic design of electric motors; which involves a rotating rotor within a stator. Such a design requires clearance between the two components; however, in a hubmotor configuration road-shock may cause the rotor to impact the stator, which can cause catastrophic motor failure. If these failures can be avoided hubmotors can be implemented on consumer vehicles allowing for more efficient electric powered cars.

PACRAT

This project focuses on improving the REDCROC design for Orbital Debris Mitigation. Improvements will be made to the original design, to provide the customer with a viable debris mitigation system.