Four college students, who participated on teams that won a NASA aeronautics competition, are spending their summer applying some of what they learned. They’re working at one of NASA’S research centers. They were among more than 60 university students from across the globe who shared their vision of the future of air transportation with NASA and some of its researchers responsible for developing the latest in aviation technology.
For more than a decade, NASA has sponsored an aeronautics competition for college students. This year, students were asked to submit ideas for future types of air vehicles or air transportation systems. Their prize was a chance at one of four paid internships at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
The Fundamental Aeronautics Program of NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate received nine team entries from seven U.S. colleges and two international universities.
“I was extremely excited about the possibility of working at NASA,” said Brian Crewey, who just graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va., with a degree in Aerospace Engineering. “I really enjoy working here because it gives me the opportunity to learn first hand what science and engineering is like in a ‘real world’ atmosphere. I would love to become a civil servant here at NASA Langley doing something with aerodynamics.”
Crewey was on one of the two top ranked teams, an all-undergraduate student team from Virginia Tech, and Great Britain’s Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England. Their project was to design a light sport amphibious aircraft with a significant reduction in perceived noise. The other group that shared top honors was an all-graduate student team from the Georgia Institute of Technology that submitted a project proposing to use an unmanned vehicle to find methane on Mars.
A three-way tie for second place included an undergraduate team from Montana State University, Bozeman, Mont., that did an aircraft noise abatement project, a team from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga., and a team from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va., both of which designed an unmanned vehicle to detect methane on Mars.
All competition participants received a certificate of achievement, a NASA memento and a letter of congratulation.
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