Commercial Space

AET students possess air vehicle technical and process engineering cross-over skills that commercial space companies and NASA find valuable for today's rapid launch, return, and mission readiness profiles using Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLV's).  Following our own curiosity on structures in space - one small step, right? - the AMT-I Center achieved it's first physical design and debris impact test of an exploratory orbital vehicle maintenance project in late 2023 and continuing in 2024. Project teams produced replica builds of existing space debris shielding design (Whipple Shields). We tested supersonic projectile impacts in Phase I to look at impact damage within Earth's atmosphere. Phase II altered design spacing to evaluate structural failure modes at hypersonic / low orbital speeds in a vacuum, replicating the space environment as closely as possible. We partnered with University of Dayton's Impact Physics Laboratory and a hypersonic air gun to fire an aluminum sphere at almost 7 km/sec. and watched it turn to plasma on impact with the lead bumper shield. We also did some additional science (too long to post here) and got COOL radiograph pics of the cloud. Don't worry, we had our safety glasses on.