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Past participants in NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Student Competition said the experience was a rewarding one that helped them learn more about aeronautics and encouraged them to improve their approaches to research and creative problem-solving.

In the 2008-2009 competition, students were challenged to develop ideas for making commercial supersonic air transportation available by 2020. Contest participants did so by examining obstacles to supersonic transportation and proposing solutions. In an additional challenge, some students submitted designs for a small supersonic airliner.

The top U.S. individual winner won a $1,000 cash prize, and members of the top U.S. team split $1,500. International students were not eligible for cash prizes but received an engraved trophy. All participants received a NASA certificate and free student versions of two engineering software programs.

Edric San Miguel was the first-place winner in the U.S. individual category for his design concept, "The Silent Airliner." When he entered, San Miguel was a junior at the Norfolk Technical Center in Norfolk, Va.

San Miguel is a student in Norfolk Public Schools' NORSTAR Gifted Program, which promotes scientific research, robotics, inventions and innovations. He first entered the program after being told about it by his teacher, Joy Young, during his sophomore year.

"That year, I entered the competition as an individual and placed second in the U.S. individual awards category," he said. "I tied with a senior from Arizona. Last year, I decided that I would take on the next challenge of the contest as a high school junior. That is when I placed first place in the entire high school division."

The aeronautics contest is just one way San Miguel has been involved with NASA. During the summer, he participated in the NASA Langley Aerospace Research Summer Scholars project. "Through this program, I worked as an intern at NASA Langley's Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate and Aeronautics Systems Analysis Branch," he said. He continued working as an intern through the fall session as a part-time intern. He plans to participate in the aeronautics contest again.

"The biggest thing I got out of this contest is the internship," he said. "Through this internship, I was able to work with NASA engineers and experience what aeronautical engineers do. I was able to make new friends with my fellow interns, establish contacts with engineers, and enter the pipeline into working for NASA."

San Miguel hopes to attend Virginia Tech and major in aerospace engineering and minor in business management.

Second place in the individual category went to Andrew Andraka, who was a sophomore at Bishop Hendricken High School in Warwick, R.I., at the time he designed his entry, "Next-Generation Supersonic Airliner."

"I learned about this contest two years ago when my dad pointed it out, noting it was a topic where I could write all I wanted about airplanes," he said. "The first essay I wrote was 'The Next Generation DC-3,' where I designed a hybrid aircraft encompassing a canard wing setup, coupled with a Custer Channel wing. I received an honorable mention for my essay, so I decided I would try again with the 'Next Generation Supersonic Airliner.'"

Participating in the contest, Andraka said, was both a good learning experience and an enjoyable opportunity. "I learned a lot more about airline design and the thought process entailed to devise original concepts," he said. "It also gave me a good excuse to expand my library of aviation resources."

Andraka said that after majoring in aerospace engineering, he hopes to start an aircraft research and manufacturing company, specializing in light-sport aircraft and general aviation aircraft. He is working on flight training and hopes to be a private pilot with multiple endorsements before graduating college.

Jason Jong and Ziang Xie, of Arcadia High School in Arcadia, Calif., won first place in the U.S. team category of the contest. Jong, a junior at the time of the entry, and Xie, then a senior, named their design concept "The Lazarus T1."

"I had never participated in the NASA aeronautics competition nor any other NASA related or funded opportunities before entering the aeronautics competition," Jong said. "I don't quite remember, but I believe I was simply clicking around on NASA's Web site and came across the 'student contests' section for high schoolers. From the list, I saw the aeronautics contest, described as an aircraft design contest. At the time, I was an incoming sophomore. From about seventh-grade, I have had a lot of enthusiasm with airplanes, reading books, and searching the Web, so naturally, the contest was something I really really gravitated towards. I made a goal to enter, but unfortunately I waited until my junior year before I organized the completion of the project.

"The most rewarding aspect of entering this contest was the openness in creativity the contest allowed to designers," Jong said. "Though I have seen many plane designs through photos online, it was not until I entered this competition that I began piecing together feasible airplane designs of my own and developing my own imagination, like a precursor to actual aerospace engineering. It really brought a sense of creativity that I find rewarding, considering what we were able to accomplish."

Jong is currently applying to colleges. "My intended major is physics, which I have always liked," he said. "However, engineering seems a likely major for me as well, as my dad is a civil engineer. I'm keeping my options open for now. And, if I don't get into college, the Air Force sounds like a mighty fun place to go too!"

Xie heard about the contest through Jong. "I had never participated in this or any other NASA-affiliated contest before, with the exception of a regional Science Bowl competition at JPL (NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and at first I was hesitant about entering with my minimal knowledge," he said. "I gradually became more interested in the contest, however, as my teammate described how our submission would address issues with supersonic flight. We decided Jason would handle most of the basic design components, and I would work on creating a CAD model of our plane as well as help research technological advances, which might make supersonic flight more plausible in the future.

"The Fundamental Aeronautics competition piqued my interest in aeronautics and also helped me learn how to collaborate with a teammate in writing a design proposal," Xie said. "Most importantly, I learned how to quickly research and become more knowledgeable about a specific field."

Xie is currently attending UC Berkeley, majoring in electrical engineering and computer science.

Related Resources
Amphibious Tiltrotor Design Competition (2009-2010) ?
Subsonic Rotorcraft and Green Aviation Competitions (2010-2011) ?
Aeronautics Competition Winners 2009 ?
Designing a Faster Future
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Since March 2009, NASA has provided streaming video online of Earth and the station's exterior as the laboratory complex orbits 220 miles above Earth at 17,500 miles per hour. The new in-cabin streaming video includes audio of communications between Mission Control and the astronauts, when available.

Television from the station is available only when the complex is in contact with the ground through its high-speed communications antenna and NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. During "loss of signal" periods, Internet viewers may see a test pattern. When the space shuttle is docked to the station, the stream will include video and audio of those activities.

The station is a unique partnership between the space agencies of the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia. Construction began in 1998 and will be completed in 2010. Twenty-two crews have lived aboard the orbiting laboratory since 2000, including the current crew of five. Station residents have conducted important scientific experiments and gathered data to help assist future missions.

To view the streaming station video on Feb. 1, visit:

The GOES-P spacecraft continues being processed at the Astrotech Facility in Titusville, Fla. The Imager, Sounder and Solar X-Ray Imager have completed cleaning and inspections. The optical port covers have been successfully installed. Those covers are one of the last mechanisms to be deployed once GOES-P gets into orbit.

GOES-P is the latest weather satellite developed by NASA to aid the nation's meteorologists and climate scientists. GOES satellites provide the familiar weather pictures seen on United States television newscasts every day. GOES provides nearly continuous imaging and sounding, which allows forecasters to better measure changes in atmospheric temperature and moisture distributions, which increase the accuracy of their forecasts. GOES environmental information is used for a host of applications, including weather monitoring and prediction models.

Along with the instruments GOES-P will carry, it also contains seven appendages and mechanisms that are stowed for launch and later deployed during transfer orbit or at various phases of on-orbit testing. Those deployable mechanisms and appendages are: Aft omni antenna; Deployable aft blanket (DAB); Solar array; X-ray positioner (XRP); Magnetometer boom; Instrument radiant cooler covers; and the optical port covers.

These seven mechanisms are put into operation after the Delta IV rocket deploys GOES-P into space. Here's the order of how they work: Shortly after separation from the launch vehicle on day one of Launch and Orbit Raising (LOR), the Aft omni and DAB are deployed. At about the twelfth day, once geosynchronous orbit is achieved, the solar array is deployed. The solar array powers GOES-P in orbit. At around day 13 or 14 the XRP is released, followed by the magnetometer boom. By around day 17 in orbit, the instrument optical port covers are deployed at the end of Bus In-Orbit Testing (IOT). Finally, after about 30 days in orbit the radiant cooler covers are deployed.

Two solid rocket boosters were installed on Jan. 15, 2010, on the Delta IV Launch Vehicle that will carry GOES-P into space. GOES-P was transferred to its fueling stand on Monday, January 18. The L-35 Countdown Launch Procedure (CLP) Rehearsal was successfully completed on January 19, and the next day, the Propulsion System Valve Driver Functional Testing was completed. Now, Propulsion System Pressurization and Leak Checks are in progress in preparation for fueling operations.

The Eastern Range has approved the GOES-P new launch date of March 1, 2010.

NASA contracted with Boeing to build and launch the GOES-P spacecraft. NASA's Launch Services Program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida supported the launch in an advisory role. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) manages the GOES program, establishes requirements, provides all funding and distributes environmental satellite data for the United States. Goddard procures and manages the design, development and launch of the satellites for NOAA on a cost-reimbursable basis.

"We pressurized the module to twice Earth's atmosphere to demonstrate the ultimate design capability of the structure, and followed that by pushing and pulling it to simulate the forceful tug of the different mission phases," said Mike Kirsch, manager of the Composite Crew Module (CCM) project. "There were no anomalies and performance aligned amazingly well with analytical predictions," he added.

Additional testing of the composite crew module will be conducted at Langley to gauge the structure's resistance to damage, culminating in a planned test to failure. As a first step, the structure has proven resistant to the type of damage that might occur during ground handling, as proven by a carefully designed set of damage-related experiments followed by a repeat of the internal pressure test.

The crew module structure was fabricated by a collaborative team of NASA and industry partners at Alliant Techsystems (ATK), Iuka, Miss. Its top and bottom halves were laid up by hand using a stiffened honeycomb sandwich of carbon fiber impregnated with resin, heat- and pressure-treated in an autoclave, then spliced together using local heaters outside the autoclave. During buildup of the two halves, many of the critical, orthogonal joints were assembled by the use of preformed three dimensional weaving technology, termed Pi joints.

For the push and pull load tests, the structure was blanketed with 318 strain gages -- fiber optic cables generating about 3,500 channels of data -- and 80 acoustic sensors that listen for fiber breaks in the composite lay-ups during the testing. In addition, a stereo video system focused on complex-shaped zones of interest to generate a computerized view of surface deformation.

Composite materials are desirable because they are stiff and lightweight and can be formed into complex shapes that may be more structurally efficient. In space travel, where every additional pound of weight drives costs higher, any weight savings provides increased payload capacity and potentially reduces mission expense.

Kirsch believes work on this project will enable more informed decisions about structural materials for future NASA spacecraft.

"One of the primary project objectives was to gain hands-on experience for NASA with our contract partners by designing, building and testing a full scale complex structure such as this, then communicate lessons learned to engineers working composites across the agency," said Kirsch.

There have been many lessons learned, including the challenge of keeping weight down while meeting design requirements for a human-rated spacecraft.

NESC sponsored the three-year CCM project as part of its mission to solve technical problems related to spaceflight and to make spaceflight safer. The CCM is an all-composite representation of the part-metal, part-composite flight crew module Orion, which is part of NASA's Constellation Program to return man to the moon and/or Mars.

For more information about the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, visit:

The grooved mounds in the picture, which are located in a northern hemisphere region known as Belet, are about 80 kilometers (50 miles) wide and about 60 meters (200 feet) high.

The shapes of these landscape features have not been seen on Titan before, though they bear similarity to spidery features known as coronae on Venus. A corona is a circular to elliptical feature thought to result from the flow of heat in a planet's interior.

Like forensic scientists, radar team members are trying to sleuth out what created these lines and hills on Titan.

"This star-shaped pattern of the hills indicates something significant happening in the middle of the star," said Steve Wall of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a Cassini scientist on the radar team. "It might be caused by tectonic forces, such as the forces that pull the crust of a planet apart, or rainfall that leads to erosion, or an ice intrusion like a dike."

All of these forces produce grooves on Earth's surface, but Wall says the radar team is not yet sure what is happening on Titan.

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The near-Earth object, designated 2010 AB78, was discovered by WISE Jan. 12. The mission's sophisticated software picked out the moving object against a background of stationary stars. As WISE circled Earth, scanning the sky above, it observed the asteroid several times during a period of one-and-a-half days before the object moved beyond its view. Researchers then used the University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter (88-inch) visible-light telescope near the summit of Mauna Kea to follow up and confirm the discovery.

The asteroid is currently about 158 million kilometers (98 million miles) from Earth. It is estimated to be roughly 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in diameter and circles the sun in an elliptical orbit tilted to the plane of our solar system. The object comes as close to the sun as Earth, but because of its tilted orbit, it will not pass very close to Earth for many centuries. This asteroid does not pose any foreseeable impact threat to Earth, but scientists will continue to monitor it.

Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with orbits that pass relatively close to Earth's path around the sun. In extremely rare cases of an impact, the objects may cause damage to Earth's surface. An asteroid about 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide is thought to have plunged into our planet 65 million years ago, triggering a global disaster and killing off the dinosaurs.

Additional asteroid and comet detections will continue to come from WISE. The observations will be automatically sent to the clearinghouse for solar system bodies, the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., for comparison against the known catalog of solar system objects. A community of professional and amateur astronomers will provide follow-up observations, establishing firm orbits for the previously unseen objects.

"This is just the beginning," said Ned Wright, the mission's principal investigator from UCLA. "We've got a fire hose of data pouring down from space."

On Jan. 14, the WISE mission began its official survey of the entire sky in infrared light, one month after it rocketed into a polar orbit around Earth from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. By casting a wide net, the mission will catch all sorts of cosmic objects, from asteroids in our own solar system to galaxies billions of light-years away. Its data will serve as a cosmic treasure map, pointing astronomers and telescopes, such as NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, to the most interesting finds.

WISE is expected to find about 100,000 previously unknown asteroids in our main asteroid belt, a rocky ring of debris between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It will also spot hundreds of previously unseen near-Earth objects.

By observing infrared light, WISE will reveal the darkest members of the near-Earth object population -- those that don't reflect much visible light. The mission will contribute important information about asteroid and comet sizes. Visible-light estimates of an asteroid's size can be deceiving, because a small, light-colored space rock can look the same as a big, dark one. In infrared, however, a big dark rock will give off more of a thermal, or infrared glow, and reveal its true size. This size information will give researchers a better estimate of how often Earth can expect potentially devastating impacts.

"We are thrilled to have found our first new near-Earth object," said Amy Mainzer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Mainzer is the principal investigator of NEOWISE, a program to mine the collected WISE data for new solar system objects. "Many programs are searching for near-Earth objects using visible light, but some asteroids are dark, like pavement, and don't reflect a lot of sunlight. But like a parking lot, the dark objects heat up and emit infrared light that WISE can see."

"It is great to receive the first of many anticipated near-Earth object discoveries by the WISE system," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL. "Analysis of the WISE data will go a long way toward understanding the true nature of this population."

JPL manages the WISE mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The ground-based observations are partly supported by the National Science Foundation. ?

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise, http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise .

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