NU HOPE
Northeastern University High-altitude Object Protection Experiment
Northeastern University High-altitude Object Protection Experiment (NU HOPE) is a team comprised of 22 proud space nerds and Star Wars geeks!
This is the third year in a row Northeastern University’s chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is participating in NASA Student Launch! However, apart from the project leads NU HOPE members are completely new to the competition. The vast majority of our team this year consists of freshman engineers, who were completely new to rocketry. This challenged the experienced members to become teachers to move the team from rookies to seasoned rocketeers!
At Northeastern University, all students participate in Cooperative Education (Co-op), entailing that they alternate classroom studies with full-time work in career-related jobs for six months. This required some of our team members to work full time jobs in addition to their Student Launch responsibilities. Balancing the two sometimes proved to be a major challenge, which required lots of good time management skills to overcome.
NU HOPE launched our subscale twice, RED I and RED II, at Bridgeton Area Rocket Club (BARC) and Maine Missile Math and Science Club (MMMSC) respectively. We have launched / will launch our full-scale three times, RED III, RED IV, and RED V at Valley AeroSpace Team (VAST), Central Virginia Tripoli # 25 Battle Park, and finally at the NASA Student Launch competition at Bragg Farms in Toney, AL. Northeastern University is located in Boston, Massachusetts requiring our team members to travel long distances for most launches, but seeing our launch vehicle soar into the sky makes everything worth it!
Our team members feel extremely fortunate to have found our passion for aeronautics and take every opportunity we can to run educational outreach events to expose the next generation to the wonders of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Our favorite activity is called Stomp Rockets where we explain to kids the basics of rocketry and then let them use their imaginations to create their own little rocket that we then have them test launch!! Ultimately our goal is to show kids that their curiosity is powerful, and that STEM are fields that they should explore and that will challenge them in a fun way!
We’d like to thank our faculty advisor Andrew Gouldstone, our mentor Robert DeHate, Chuck Neff from Valley Aerospace for helping us with our full-scale launch, the AIAA Northeastern Executive Board, especially Adam Poirier, and Elliott Leslie for his guidance during design reviews.
