UTDPD Blotter

November 11

• UTD student was issued a citation for possessing a fake TXDL license.

November 12

• Unknown person activated the fire alarm at one of the emergency pull stations at 9:30 p.m. in the SLC.

November 14 • A UTD staff member reported computer equipment was missing from a classroom in ECSW at 10:29 a.m.

November 16

• Officer responded to a report of stolen property at the SU Food Court around 4:10 p.m.

ROCKET CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 build from ground up.

The rocket was named T3R1 — or Terry — and was 3.125 inches in diameter and 57 inches in length. Manufacturing began during the spring 2022 semester, and because AIAA had never launched a rocket before, the team learned everything from resources at the makerspace in SPN. Junior computer science major Alejandro Garcia was the structural lead for this project and senior mechanical engineering major Muhammad Shoaib Moosa was the lead engineer, overseeing the development of the manufacturing and design plan.

“In fact, besides the motor, all including entire University of California system and Emory university. PLAN guidance mainly addresses dining and auxiliary singleuse plastics and not medical or laboratory plastics.

“The main reason this has become a large part of this conversation is because plastics cause environmental degradation across the world,” Paulina Hruskoci, a Geospatial Sciences Senior and the student who spearheaded the plasticfree intiative said. “So as of right now, according to the OECD, less than 10% of plastics globally are actually recycled. So even though of our components were built in-house,” Moosa said. “I determined the dimensions of the rocket by doing a preliminary design on open rocket and settled on what works best for us.”

Inside the rocket was an avionics system, which monitors the rocket’s altitude during the flight and compares the rocket’s real apogee — maximum altitude — with a simulated projection. The data is then used to improve future launches.

Sophomore computer engineering major Emmanuel Llanes, the electronics lead, explained how Arduino Nano drove the L1 rocket’s avionics system. Arduino Nano, a multicontroller, uses a people might be recycling them, they don't actually get to go through the process in be repurposed when they're not recycled. These microplastics degrade into the environment and can be consumed by humans and impact natural environments, which can cause health concerns for both US wildlife and ecosystems across the world.”

There are four main phases to PLAN’s gradual plastic ban: assembling a Plastic Free Task Force to assemble and execute a plan, eliminating non-essential disposable plastics, creating a policy to maintain a standard for plastic elimination and introducing reusable substi - program to interact with a pressure sensor and SD card module with data for analysis.

“During the rocket's flight, the pressure sensor continuously collects atmospheric pressure and uses this data to compute the rocket's altitude over time,” Llanes said. “The Arduino extracts this altitude data and saves it onto an SD card that is loaded on the SD card module.”

Only one concern caught the team's attention during the launch — the timing of the parachute deployment. The parachute was expected to deploy at apogee but instead deployed a few seconds later. They had previously performed simulations tutes. Honhon said that if Benson signs onto PLAN, it will put the committee’s first step – assembling a Task Force – into action.

“[PLAN] provides accountability through these pledge items, while also providing flexibility and expert guidance to help us with this implementation….” Honhon said. “They've helped students and campuses do this before, and so they're a great way to kind of plug into those national examples and make execution as seamless as possible at UT Dallas.

UTD’s taskforce would be comprised of University stakeholders from different departments who under - on the deployment, which was why this delay was a surprise.

“We realized the weight of the rocket was less than the rocket on the software that we did the simulations on, which may have caused the rocket to reach apogee faster than we anticipated,” Moosa said. “The ejection charge was set at the 10 second mark, the rocket was way into descent when the ejection charge occurred.”

The launch sets a trajectory for more launches in the upcoming months, with a high bar for UTD’s growing aerospace community. NASA holds a student launch initiative where college teams, which AIAA hopes to stand how policy will impact their department and are dedicated to making PLAN strategies workable. The taskforce would also be responsible for creating a timeline to execute pledge items using information from the University budget, university contracts and facilities management. Ideally, this force would work with Dining Services to exceed their timeline goals.

“We want to convene the task force as soon as possible. Hopefully this fall, maybe early next spring,” Honhon said. “We want set timeline for the pledge items. So again, there will be certain plastics that will be targeted first and we may participate in.

“Future plans include launching an l2 rocket as a team and then participating in some competitions such as NASA student launch and the Spaceport America Cup,” Kahler said. “We will have second and third l1 launches for the teams that haven't gotten certified on Dec. 17 and Jan. 23.”

UTD AIAA includes a group called TEKCOR that specifically focuses on rocketry, with several teams building their own rockets and obtaining rocket certifications. Each group has people working on coding payload and physically building the rocket.

Senior electrical engineering ma- want to go faster, like the plastics that exists in dining services, which there is not so much of.”

The Sustainability’s proposed composition includes members from Facilities, Maintenance & Custodial, Dining services, the Office and Accessibility, Housing Services, the Sustainability Office, administration, the Health and Wellness department, Resident life, Event planning, the Office of Communications, the Office of Research and Innovation, the Office of Accessibility, and students, staff and faculty. Appointments for students, staff and faculty would come from the Academic Senate, Staff jor Rachel Kahler, president of AIAA, talks about how the club provides a community for students interested in aerospace.

“It’s to have sort of an aerospace presence at UTD since we don’t really have a program for it … it’s funny because there are so many people that are interested in it,” Kahler said. “I wish that we had a program for it because a lot of people are mechanical engineers, but we don’t really have an aerospace avenue for them.”

With the lack of true aerospace studies at UTD, AIAA hopes to expand their community on campus and show their interest in having an official program at the school.

Council, Student Government, and Graduate Student Assembly.

“Plastic waste is also a large environmental justice issue. Many of the places where plastics are processed both in the US and globally are located near low income, predominantly minority communities, and it's these communities that face the main environmental degradation and health concerns as a result of these petrochemicals,” Hruskoci said. “So the goal is to find a more environmentally friendly way to go about our everyday processes and potentially find a way to phase out these non essential single use plastics.”