Skip to main content
NC State Home
College of Engineering
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Aerospace Events and Competitions

Several Senior Design teams compete in national competitions, often outperforming many different teams from all over the country. Below are some of the most recent competitions where our Seniors have participated and excelled.

SSA Competitions

A 2022-2023 Senior Design team won third prize in the first annual Collegiate Space Competition held in Austin, Texas. The event was established in 2022 to recognize innovation in the space industry and support new talent in the field. Team Space Raccoons designed and built a Rubble Attachment and Conveyance CubeSat (RACC). RACC, a three-unit cubesat constructed with commercial components, was designed to capture orbital debris.

Image of student project

NASA Student Launch

Each year, our High-Powered Rocketry Team Competes in NASA Student Launch with a new full-scale rocket that they design, manufacture and build from scratch every year. Seniors from the team comprise their Senior Design group. In 2024, the team competed on April 10 through 14, the results will be announced later in the summer.

Rocket taking off

AIAA Design, Build, Fly (DBF)

Each year, one Senior Design team is comprised of seniors in NC State’s AIAA Design Build Fly (DBF) Team, who build UAVs to complete specific missions for the competition. In 2023, our team was able to compete and fly in the 2023 competition and successfully completed their ground mission to test for structural deformation by placing weight on fuselage while wingtips are mounted to test fixture, and the first flight mission to complete three laps within the five minutes without carrying a payload. Wolfeye unfortunately crashed on the third attempt of their second mission. NC State DBF team placed 51st out of about 100 teams overall.

NC State’s AIAA Design Build Fly (DBF) Team

AIAA Student Conferences

A 2020-2021 Senior Design team won first prize under the team category at the 2022 AIAA Region II Student Conference at Georgia Tech. Ten team members designed, manufactured and built the Wandering Observer of Lunar Features (WOLF) Rover during their senior design course, and a group of the original ten prepared the paper for the conference, winning first prize.

Photo of the Wandering Observer of Lunar Features (WOLF) Rover senior design project