Advancing Exploration Risk Reduction and Workforce Motivation through Dynamic Flight Testing

There is a known and documented national need for an experienced and educated workforce in aerospace and defense. A recent National Academy of Sciences study, “Workforce Needs for the National Vision for Space Exploration” commissioned by NASA, highlights a common NASA, DoD and aerospace industry need for system engineers and project managers. Additionally, the strong resurgence in, as an example, the desire to Return to the Moon, and the incredible burden of cost associated with complex space missions, is driving the aerospace industry to consider low cost risk reduction method developments prior to actual spaceflight. USC is addressing both of these in an innovative educational and prototyping forum through the use of “hands-on” training of students through flight dynamic systems. USC’s Astronautics and Space Technology Division of the Viterbi School of Engineering, and the Information Sciences Institute has teamed to provide a strong three part foundation of Education/Research/Build&Fly to train the next generation space leadership and workforce, through development of very low cost flight dynamics risk reduction platforms. The first example of this new and innovative methodology resulted in “LEAPFROG”, the Lunar Entry and Approach Platform For Research On Ground project, a multi-semester design-to-flight student activity. LEAPFROG is developing a test bed lunar prototype vehicle that can fly repeated times over the course of a single day in free flight to simulate a lunar descent and landing sequence. The vehicle has active onboard guidance, navigation and attitude control, and the “hover” propulsion is supplied by a 50lbf model aircraft jet turbine engine. The concept was inspired by the LLRV that was used to train the Apollo astronauts at Dryden Research Center and the hover flight tests at the National Hover Test Facility at Edwards AFB for SDIO KKV vehicle testing. LEAPFROG is a low cost risk reduction platform for high cost and complex sensors, which provide today’s students not only hands on flight test training and design implementation for next generation spacecraft, but a highly motivational educational project to sustain interest and enthusiasm for aerospace in general. This paper will outline the background, the overall USC strategy in educating next generation space leaders, the use of low cost dynamic flight platforms as risk reduction platforms for both technologies and system integration challenges for next generation space systems.