Emma Strong
As a student pursuing her graduate degree in aerospace engineering at The University of Alabama, my dream is to design spacecraft hardware that will assist humans in living on other planets and moons. Inspired by the space shuttle missions of my childhood, and now the innovative and growing commercial space industry, I eagerly anticipate being a part of the technological developments coming out of the aerospace industry in the coming years.
Senior Design Project
For my engineering senior design project, I helped design a dual-camera sensor package for a CubeSat lunar rover. The sensor package is designed using commercially available off-the-shelf parts to reduce costs and would provide images for rover navigation on the surface of the Moon and to support the science objectives of the mission.
Master’s Culminating Experience: Starship High-Level Analysis
To conclude my master’s degree in aerospace engineering, I performed a high-level analysis of SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy vehicles. The goals of the report were to assess the performance and feasibility of the vehicles for various missions as well as the personal goal to gain a better personal understanding of how this launch vehicle works. My analysis covers the launch performance of the Starship atop the Super Heavy booster, the performance gains due to refueling Starship in orbit, and the landing of Starship under different engine configurations. Due to how quickly designs change at SpaceX, as of January 2022, several of the design parameters on which I based my analysis have evolved or been changed completely. Nevertheless, the conclusion of my report that the Starship program is feasible and will likely change the landscape of the space launch industry should continue to remain true.