May 7, 2010
A student design team from Dr. Wallace Fowler’s Spacecraft Mission Design course placed first in the AIAA Region IV Student Paper Conference held in Houston, TX April 2-3. The team, DORRA (Deployable Orbiter Rover Reconnaissance Assembly) the Europa Explorer, is a conceptual mission which would examine the Jovian moon’s environment, composition, internal structure, and potential habitability using a two-pronged approach. An orbiter will collect scientific data at an altitude of 200 km while a rover simultaneously provides ground-truth measurements. The extensive use of existing technologies ensures feasible operational readiness for the 2018 launch opportunity, while demonstrated advances in real-time reconnaissance and high-level navigation autonomy will pave the way for future robotic missions.
DORRA will be a huge leap forward in understanding not only the origin, evolution, and interaction of giant planets and their satellites, but also the potential for life to exist beyond our own planet.
Team members include Kate Gushwa, Chirag Patel, Ana Guerrero de la Peña, Jaime I. Cervantes, Jay Eldridge, Jose A. Carreño, and Ryan Masterson. Kate Gushwa presented at the conference with Jaime and Jay attending as well.
One judge commented, “Your presentation was all anyone was talking about. The style [heavy use of graphics and animations with little text] made it enjoyable for the audience, and the technical information was presented in a way that anyone could understand.”
The paper will go on to compete in the international AIAA student paper competition which is held at the Aerospace Science Meeting next January.
