Posted on April 21, 2025 by Sean M. Wood
Madeline De La Garza, Aubrey Fuchs, Makayla Watts and Kimberly Tijerina were not rocket scientists when they enrolled at UTSA. They would probably argue they’re still not rocket scientists.
But the four senior mechanical engineering majors are testing their mettle against more than 50 collegiate teams participating in the NASA Student Launch Challenge. The team of four is competing against teams three times as large as theirs to build, test and launch a vehicle with payload by May. The activity is built around a NASA mission in collaboration with NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, which hosts several challenges for students in middle school through higher education across the country.
The UTSA students have had multiple design reviews already, and will have a flight readiness review and launch review before their final flight in Huntsville, Alabama. They have to pass each stage to continue in the competition. The rocket itself is also the capstone project for their senior mechanical engineering design course.
“This project is a really good opportunity for us to get hands-on experience on a whole lot of things, not just the mechanical engineering design process but there are a lot of electronics in this too,” De La Garza said.
She is responsible for recovery calculations and parachute deployment. Watts is configuring two altimeters, a primary and backup. Fuchs is responsible for airframe and propulsion design. She works closely with Tijerina who is developing the payload. That will consist of a series of sensors that connect with NASA transceivers to transmit maximum velocity, maximum apogee, time of flight, and orientation of the STEMnauts- Lego minifigures that sit inside the rocket to simulate a crewed mission. There will also be instruments to help the team determine if a crew would survive.
“I recommended this senior capstone to this group because I believe in their ability to pull it off,” said Daniel I. Pineda, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Industrial Engineering. “I know these students from my courses and their involvement in my research lab, and I know that they have the resourcefulness and determination to make it happen. They continue to impress me with their commitment to excellence and their strategic sourcing of assistance in topics that are not traditionally covered by the mechanical engineering curricula.”
Learning radio communications, data collection and transmission have augmented their engineering skills. “I wouldn’t say that our project is building a rocket,” De La Garza said. “I would say that our project is building engineers.”
That includes helping the next generation of engineers see that women have a place in the industry. “I want people to see that women can take up space in engineering,” Tijerina said.
Only about 16% of UTSA mechanical engineering students are women, according to Pineda. Only 4% of engineering degrees are sought by women of color according to the Society of Women Engineers. So, they take seriously their positions as role models.
“I’ve not worked with a senior design group so passionate about the next generation,” Pineda said. “These students recognize their responsibilities and opportunities to lift up their communities and they make it their mission to do so.”
He said they have visited several San Antonio-area schools, even helping build balloon-powered water-bottle cars to demonstrate principles of fluid mechanics.
“By being more inclusive and creating these paths to work with people of different backgrounds and cultures, we can make engineering more creative as a whole,” Watts said. “We have an ardent desire to increase inclusivity and make engineering more diverse. It’s about opening up engineering to be more diverse not just in personnel but also in ways of thinking and designing.”
The teammates are not aware of any other “all-girl” teams, as they call themselves, in the NASA competition. So they play that up in their work on the project.
“We love to put pink on everything, and we love to make everything very girly,” De La Garza said. “We do that with a lot of intention because we want people to understand that women belong in engineering.”
“All of us come from different backgrounds,” Fuchs said. “People should know that it doesn’t matter where you start or where you come from; if you want to make it, you can. You don’t need to be a genius. You just need determination and passion.”
— Sean M. Wood
