Purdue students attended a kickoff meeting for AerosPACE in Atlanta.

For the seventh consecutive year, Purdue students are participating in Boeing’s Aerospace Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering (AerosPACE) program.

The multi-university capstone project had a kickoff meeting on Aug. 29-30 in Atlanta. Representatives from all nine universities — Purdue, Clemson University, Georgia Tech, Tuskegee University, Brigham Young University, University of Washington, University of Texas at El Paso, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (Daytona Beach, Fla.) and Iowa State University — attended to meet their teammates for the first time and learn about this year’s program.

Students were divided amongst nine teams with three or four universities represented on each team. Purdue’s group includes 16 students, 11 from AAE and five from mechanical engineering. Purdue is represented on five of the nine teams.

Each group is charged to design, build and fly a fixed-wing unmanned aerial system (UAS) for a specific mission of their own design. Missions are chosen by the teams in order to teach systems design, validation and verification, as well as engineering lifecycle concepts. Missions will be finalized by late September in the classes (AAE 490 and ME 496).

Each group will build pieces of their aircraft at their team’s member universities. The groups won’t meet in person again until April for the flight demonstration near Charleston, S.C.