The 9th Annual First Nations Launch Competition

The First Nations Launch program invites student teams from tribal colleges and AISES chapters across the country to design, build, and fly a competition rocket. This year’s competition parameters challenge the tribal college students to design and build a “true-scale” model that closely approximates the design of a current or historical rocket or missile. The AISES challenge requires students to reach a prescribed apogee and maximize descent time as the rocket returns on parachute.

A range of activities from Thursday, April 19 - Saturday, April 21 are open to the public. The full schedule of activities for the 2018 FNL activities is here.

NASA Aerospace engineer, Joe Connolly will give the keynote address to the FNL competition teams on Saturday, April 21 at 7:30 pm in the Todd Wehr Center at Carthage College. Mr. Connolly works in control and dynamics engineering in support of dynamic modeling for supersonic propulsion system. Mr. Connolly is the recipient of several awards, including the NASA Glenn Diversity Leadership Award: For development of relationships with Tribal Colleges and organizations that support Native American students, student recruitment at GRC and the Agency, and advocacy of student mentoring.