 This course is essentially a hands-on project where students get to work on a model satellite that moves around on a simulated environment that is essentially a frictionless table with a barrier that can be used as a inertial tracking area and it really just allows students to work on a variety of different topics from control to propulsion to hardware to electronics. A track set is also known as a tracking satellite and what we do is we work on a ground station and a satellite and having laser communication between the two, observing an obstacle and then transmitting that to the ground station from the satellite. The VIP track set course is a design build test course for undergraduate engineering students in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics and its goal is to send laser communication data of a desired object from a CubeSat to a ground station on a near frictionless 2D surface simulating an orbit around the earth. The VIP track set course in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics is sponsored by General Tomix. The VIP track set course is the nice platform for students across the College of Engineering to work and build with really hands-on experience on fabricating and designing and testing CubeSat light using the low friction environment which we have here in School of Aeron What drew me to this course specifically was that the difficulty with learning about space and the vehicles that we put up there is that there's not a lot of hands-on opportunities. Everything we do is very theoretical and you talk about that. Having an opportunity such as this though kind of gives you that analog that could be brought into the realm of satellites and kind of teaches you how to work on them and what's all going to go into their construction. I wanted to participate in the VIP track set course because it was something that sounded interesting to me and I've had a passion for space for my entire life. It seemed like it would be hands-on and I could learn a lot and being sponsored by General Tomix I got the email while I was working at General Tomix so I was like this is kind of cool. I continue my internship experience almost for like in the school setting. So I wanted to participate in the VIP track set course because I wanted to get more hands-on experience with working on a satellite that you can't just get in a regular classroom environment. I wanted to participate in the VIP track set course because I love the challenge of it. The technological aspects of it is complex and a hard engineering task to accomplish. Yeah, I think the biggest goal for students in the VIP track set course is to involve really students across the College of Engineering work on aerospace related problems. My biggest goal for the students is for them to understand and learn all the material as a team by themselves. I'm more of a hands-off leader so that they can understand how to do this instead of me guiding them through every step. So from this course I've learned a lot about control theory, how to implement controls, how to control the thrusters on the track set that we were working with, how to make it fall on an autonomous path, a lot of autonomy and controls. It's bringing a lot of those soft skills in as well. Teamwork, presentational skills we present every week to our professor. We get to meet with our industry sponsors from General Tomix which is very nice to do. A lot of presentational skills have come through from this opportunity. The VIP track set course has taught me a lot about communicating within a team and I've also learned a lot more about hardware and propulsion that I can apply in my future job prospects. I'm learning a plethora of things through this course. I'm learning about controls as well as electronics. Also broad systems engineering and making sure that our system will accomplish the requirements that are set before us. The best thing about this course is definitely the team aspect working with people and solving complex issues by bouncing ideas off each other and collaboration. What I enjoy most about advising the VIP track set course is seeing students be able to figure these different subjects out on their own and be able to get this great accomplishment from figuring these things out. For other students who are looking to take this course, I would recommend just taking the leap to do it. It's something I was hesitant about because I'm like, oh, there's other classes I want to take. There's other things that I might want to do. But taking a VIP course, it has a lot of different skill levels and skill sets and you learn more from being around people who are smarter than you or not as smart as you and you're kind of, you can learn to work with different people in different ways. We do a lot of cool things. It's very cool to see the autonomous control of the track set on our subteam. A lot of the other subteams are doing great work as well and those are all very interesting. If you're considering taking this course, I would highly recommend it. You will get a hands-on experience working with satellites, which is something that I think every student wants to get hands on. I would recommend this course because it allows students to get hands-on experience with a project that you don't get in a traditional classroom environment. These days, a lot of students are looking for internships and those internships look for students that already have hands-on experience in a project and it can be difficult to find projects to work on on your own. But if you're able to join a class that facilitates the project environment that you can work in, then this could be a great opportunity for you.