On a sunny day in late June, a payload constructed by Cal Poly college students took a historic journey on Dawn Aerospace’s Aurora spaceplane. The flight from Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre close to Christchurch, New Zealand, carried the corporate’s first U.S. student-built experiment to an altitude of 37,000 toes and speeds of Mach 0.79.
“This mission is putting student-built hardware on the front lines of aerospace innovation,” mentioned Kurt Colvin, retired professor and payload advisor. “Working with a next-gen spaceplane like Aurora gave our team firsthand experience integrating a payload for a reusable commercial spaceplane — a paradigm shift from traditional expendable rocket launches.”
Students designed the payload to check whether or not an off-the-shelf information acquisition system might stand up to the trials of high-altitude, spaceflight-like environments with comparable efficiency to a customized system. Colvin tapped George Harrison (Aerospace Engineering ’25) to guide the venture engineering after seeing his work on a navigation system in AERO 568: Aerospace Research and Development. Sam Ricafrente (Statistics ’24, M.S. Business Analytics ’25) and Bella McCarty (Statistics ’24, M.S. Business Analytics ’25) introduced information evaluation experience to the crew.
Harrison started working on the payload within the fall of 2024 with flight monitoring {hardware} from Bolder Flight Systems that would collect metrics to reconstruct the flight path. He spent months configuring the {hardware} to tolerate flight circumstances and match the spaceplane’s payload bay. The crew additionally gained expertise speaking with engineers at Dawn Aerospace via growth and the ultimate handoff of the payload in March of 2025.
“Being able to design and have ownership in your design is really cool,” mentioned Harrison, who now works as an engineering integration contractor with the U.S. Air Force. “And then to see it go on a space plane and know that the thing that you designed is 37,000 feet up in the sky is just incredible. There’s nothing that could beat that feeling.”
A press launch from Dawn Aerospace additionally famous that the mission laid the groundwork for future Cal Poly launches from the upcoming Paso Robles Space Innovation and Technology Park.
“Flying on Aurora is of serious strategic importance,” mentioned Colvin. “It’s hands-on access to the future of commercial spaceflight.”
A spaceplane’s horizontal launch structure — taking off and touchdown like a typical plane — has the potential to make launches more economical by rapidly reusing gear from mission to mission.
“Aurora is the perfect tool for students to not only learn the theories of aerospace, but also design, build, qualify, and operate in the real world,” mentioned James Powell, Dawn Aerospace’s chief spaceplane engineer and co-founder. “Because we recover the payload, customers gain deeper insight into performance and can more easily modify and upgrade for future flights.”
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