Northwest Indian College’s “Space Program”

Are robots now passe? The coming thing in undergraduate STEM research just might be rockets–including rockets that break the sound barrier. According to a feature recently aired on the NPR program Here and Now, faculty and students at Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Washington are leading the way.

It all started with a project to build low tech and low altitude pop bottle rockets, but jokes about the college’s “space program” inspired computer science teacher Gary Brandt to take the project to the next level. He bought a few small solid fuel rockets.

Their work caught the attention of NASA, which provided a bit of money and allowed the college to build bigger rockets and enter some competitions. One of their creations even broke the sound barrier.

The full Here and Now story, with photos, can be found here:
http://kuow.org/post/why-nasa-called-northwest-indian-college-space-center

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