ARLISS Flyback Competition 2017

Honolulu—Windward Community College
Hawai‘i Space Grant Consortium

About the ARLISS Competition

The ARLISS event is an opportunity for universities around the world to participate in several different competitions. At the 2017 ARLISS, Windward Community College (Windward CC) and Honolulu Community College (Honolulu CC) participated in the Fly Back competition.

The Windward CC team completed in ARLISS 2017 at Black Rock, Nevada with its drone fly-back entry. One of the students earned a Level 1 rocketry certification and the other a Level 2 certification. This was Windward CC's twelfth year of continuous participation at this international rocketry competition.

For the Fly Back Competition student teams construct a payload that deploys from a rocket. The rocket is launched to an altitude of 12,000 feet above ground level at which point, the drone deploys. A secondary payload on the drone, called the ASEP, is to collect atmospheric data while in the air. For the 2017 ARLISS, Windward CC and Hononlulu CC chose to construct a quadcopter as the drone. As per ARLISS requirements, the quadcopter is required to autonomously navigate to a specified GPS location. The Windward CC team was responsible for constructing the quadcopter and Honolulu CC built the payload.