High School Payload Challenge: Inspiring High School Students to Experience the Professional Design Process

A unique opportunity was devised for high school students in the greater Atlanta area to gain experience with the professional aerospace design process. This consists of a competition modeled after the competition the LIT (Launch Initiative at Tech) Georgia Tech student team is undertaking: NASA USLI (University Student Launch Initiative). The university-level initiative focuses on the entire engineering design process, with a large component revolving around documentation and design review presentations. Since a second payload can be hosted on the LIT vehicle, a competition modeled after USLI was broadcast to high school students in the greater Atlanta area. This competition focuses primarily on the presentation aspect of the design process, inviting competitors to undertake PDR (Preliminary Design Review) and CDR (Critical Design Review) presentations before building an actual payload. More experienced STEM enthusiasts took on the challenge and thoroughly engaged with the opportunity. This is unique as the structure of the competition models the actual process used by NASA engineers. Many students successfully completed designs for complex experiments, including: generating power through structural vibrations in the airframe, detecting muon emissions at different altitudes, climate and air quality investigation, and monitoring cellular signals at altitude. The HSPC (High School Payload Challenge) competition managed to enhance the views of aerospace utility and interest in talented high school students in the area by giving them the opportunity to design complex flight hardware to perform innovative experiments, utilizing the full engineering design process.