NASA Engineering Design Challenges: Spacecraft Structures. EP-2008-09-121-MSFC

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center along with their partners at other NASA centers, and in private industry, are designing and beginning to develop the next generation of spacecraft to transport cargo, equipment, and human explorers to space. These vehicles are part of the Constellation Program, which is carrying out a bold vision of human space exploration. The program includes a crew exploration vehicle and the spacecraft to carry the crew to the Moon and later to Mars. The NASA Authorization Act of 2005 directs NASA to establish a program to develop a sustained human presence on the Moon, which will serve as a stepping stone to further exploration of Mars and other destinations. This design challenge focuses on the Ares family of rockets, which will replace the Space Shuttle in the task of putting people, satellites, and scientific experiments into space. The Engineering Design Challenges connect students with the work of NASA engineers by engaging them in similar design challenges of their own. With some simple and inexpensive materials, teachers can lead an exciting unit that focuses on a specific problem that NASA engineers must solve and the process they use to solve it. In the classroom, students design, build, test, and revise their own solutions to problems that share fundamental science and engineering issues with the challenges facing NASA engineers. (Contains 28 figures.)