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Palouse Aerospace is WSU Pullman's rocketry and aviation engineering club! Our club focuses on providing hand on engineering experience to students through projects in rocketry and aerospace.
Over the last year Palouse Aerospace has continued to grow and attract new members and has taken on a few different projects. The plane team completed their cargo plane project and took on the challenge of building a fully solar powered plane. The rocket team has been hard at work on our next submission to the Spaceport America Cup through design work and small-scale testing. We are looking forward to exciting projects that our team has in store!
From paper planes to hydrogen powered drones, Palouse Aerospace offers students the opportunity to get hands-on experience in a wide-ranging discipline. The club currently consists of some 30 driven, undergraduate engineering students with a passion for aerospace. Our goal as a club is to provide WSU students with hands-on engineering experience, giving them a chance to apply classwork and develop skills that they can apply within industry to solve practical, real-world problems.
HISTORY
Founded in 1995, we first established ourselves as a student branch of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Initially competing in the AIAA’s Design, Build, Fly airplane engineering competition. Around 2014 we began our foray into rocketry. More recently, we competed in the International Rocketry Engineering Competition (formerly the Spaceport America Cup) in 2023 and are looking to make a return this summer for 2025! We’re also committed to research projects in cooperation with various on-campus research laboratories and industry partners.
With the more recent adoption of our new name and logo comes the beginning of a new era. Having an established, rich, history we feel it is now appropriate for our organization to tackle more ambitious goals and projects. As we continue to grow the club and improve our skillsets and knowledge we are ready to take new and exciting challenges!
CURRENT PROJECTS
At Palouse Aerospace, students have the opportunity to see their projects evolve through the entire engineering design process. All students are encouraged to participate throughout every phase including design, manufacturing, testing, and iteration.
Currently under continuing development by the Plane Team is a multipurpose Cargo Plane! The goal for the cargo plane project is to carry a payload of up to 10 pounds to altitudes of 400 ft. This project is for learning composite construction techniques and general model aircraft skills. The dual fuselage under the wing center makes for a lightweight plane capable of carrying cargo with odd geometries.
The wing, tail, and boom were completed at the end of the Spring 2023 semester. Since then the team has completed the fuselages, assembled the airplane, and installed the motors. The maiden flight of the airframe was last spring and we have successfully flown the plane several times since then. Currently, the team is working on the payload drop mechanism for use with a variety of payloads, as well as overhauling the landing gear.
The rocket team has been working on our next submission for the International Rocketry Engineering Competition - the world’s largest collegiate rocket engineering competition. Rocket team members have the opportunity to represent Washington State University and compete against some of the world’s best universities. Nearly 6,000 students from across 24 different countries participated in the 2023 competition.
As a part of this project, we have been developing our own composite structures to be used in the airframe including new bulkheads and filament wound airframe. The overall goal is to make as much of the rocket in-house as we can, this reduces cost and allows members to get more hands-on with the manufacturing process. This also gives us much more control over the material properties of the composites that we make so they are better optimized for weight.
As a part of this development, we successfully manufactured and flew a sub-scale rocket for our 2025 design. This sub-scale rocket also served as a flight test article for our filament wound tubes. We were able to fly the subscale in both September and October of last year. These test flights have given us a much better idea of how this airframe flies and have already made design changes to our competition rocket to account for this.
Nothing we do is possible without the generous help and support from our amazing sponsors and donors. By supporting Palouse Aerospace, you will have a positive impact on the learning of our world’s next generation of engineers. Help promote STEM education by providing students with practical skills & experience!
The tiny parts and other hardware that keep our projects in one piece. Whether its a small part or a big part, it is a part we need! Every piece helps us build an awesome rocket or plane!
This is roughly the cost for a roll of 3D-Printer filament. We use 3D-Printed parts in everything from testing prototype designs to custom mounts for onboard computers and such.
This will go a long way for specialty plane parts, this could be anything from high torque servo motors to motor speed controllers or printed circuit boards and batteries. These parts will be put to good use!
$100 dollars just about covers the cost of a single J180 rocket motor, while providing some left-over funds to put towards mounting said motor. These solid rocket motors will be used to help teach some of our newer members the basics of rocketry, through having them design, build and launch their own high-power rockets!
Composites are an integral part of what we do and are used most commonly in our rocket body tubes or airplane wings and fuselages. These processes require a lot of materials such as carbon fiber, fiberglass, and epoxy resin, as well as all the required safety gear.
Help support some of our largest projects: a solar plane with integrated solar cells, our next appearance at Spaceport America Cup this summer, and the development of our very own Hybrid Rocket Engines!
