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The first decision that goes into setting the tone for a senior capstone spacecraft design course is the choice of the projects. There are several sources of ideas for design projects, including design competitions and topics set by various technical committees. A new source of desigo ideas comes h m real world design projects. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ofice of Space Science originally released an Announcement of Opportunity in spring 2002 to solicit designs for a complete Mars mission. The Senior Capstone Spacecraft Design course in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University paralleled this proposal process for the spacecraft design projects for the 2002-2003 academic year. While the original announcement called for proposers to detennine what kind of a flight mission they would conduct, eight specific, realistic flight missions were chosen and assigned to the eight teams in the class. Many of the important aspects of the original project were duplicated; however, a significant amount of material was deleted. This paper discusses the outcome of the year-long course, compares some of the designs developed by the students to the designs chosen in the actual NASA mission design, and draws conclusions about the advantages and disadvantages of selecting a project based fiom a real solicitation. Selecting Projects for a Capstone Spacecraft -gn Course from Real World Solicitions When choosing a senior level capstone design course, many faculty struggle to find projects that both satis6 the goals of the course and provide realistic challenges to motivate the students. According to Debelak (1 982)' Jakubowski (1 994), Phillips (1 99 1)' and Dutson (1997), a design project must (1) be challenging, (2) have a high likelihood of being completed m the time allotted, (3) not be too specific that the students cannot find background material, (4) clearly show the connection with theory learned in previous courses, and (5) must provide an opporhmity to perform real design work. The last point m giving the students an opportunity to work on a real-world project is the theme of this paper. This paper discusses the selection of senior design projects for the spacecraft design course and outlines the Penn State's Mars Scout 2007 Design Project, a project based on a real spacecraft mission design soIicitation fbm the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). A year-long sequence of senior design courses has been taught at Penn State smce 1968. At the beginning of each year, a new design project is chosen. Sources of design projects in past years have included the AIAA Student Design competition (2003) and Texas Space Grant Consortium's Marsport (2003) competition. During the 2002-2003 academic year, a new source of design projects was tapped. The design project was chosen to parallel a real-world NASA mission design program. The Mars Scout program (2003) is part of NASA's long-term Mars exploration activities, and it was decided by the authors that the teams in the capstone design course would undertake a modified design project that used the original Mars Scout announcement for the general guidelines in undertaking these projects. This paper discusses the outcome of this course sequence, and compares some of the designs developed by the students to the designs chosen in the real NASA mission design, and draws conclusions about the results of the projects. Penn State's Mars Scout 2007 NASA's Office of Space Science (OSS) originally released an Announcement of Opportunity (AO) in the JAAER, Fall 2006 Page 27 1 Spencer et al.: Selecting Projects for a Capstone Spacecraft Design Course from R Published by Scholarly Commons, 2006 Selecting Projects spring 2002 to solicit reports for Mars Scout investigations. The Mars Scout competition is designed to augment or complement, but not duplicate, major missions being planned as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program or those under development by foreign space agencies. The selected Scout science mission must be ready for launch " before December 3 1,2007, with a total mission cost cap of $325 million. While the original A 0 called for individual proposers to determine what kind of a flight mission they would conduct, eight specific flight missions were chosen and assigned to the eight teams in tpe class. Many of the important aspects of the original A 0 were duplicated;

Selecting Projects for a Capstone Spacecraft Design Course from Real World Solicitations