Line of Sight
Tiny “windshield wiper” aids camera surgery
Change people's lives at home and around the world
February 2019
For Patrick Walton, space truly is the final frontier, and he’s determined to help explore it. As a junior, he started the astronautics section of BYU’s chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, including a rocket competition that eventually became the BYU Rocketry Club. Using BYU’s computers, 3D printers, and workspaces, students developed rockets that could fly more than a mile into the sky.
“We had multiple faculty with real-life experience donate their time—mentoring students, reviewing rocket designs, and helping us get permission,” he says. “Over 50 students now compete every year. Last June, a rocket built by those first students took second place at an international competition, flying above 9,000 feet.”
But BYU Rocketry was just the beginning. Walton took a special projects class from David Long, who helped him write a proposal for NASA to build, test, and launch two satellites—a proposal NASA accepted.
“Some days I still reel in shock when I realize that as students, we’ve actually done it—we’ve built a spacecraft,” Walton says. “Over the last couple of years, more than 50 students got paid to design, test, and build small satellites that will actually fly in space.”
Tiny “windshield wiper” aids camera surgery
BYU’s new Engineering Building and Engineering Research Lab were 100% funded by 17,000 generous donors.
Thanks to BYU’s mentoring program, it’s become almost commonplace for undergraduates to be published in peer-reviewed journals. But for College of Engineering and Technology senior Anthony Bennett, becoming an author once just wasn’t enough.