 A solar sail is a novel device used for propulsion on satellites. It uses light pressure to sail through space. We got invited to partner with NASA Marshall Space Flight Center on their proposal for the Solar Cruiser space mission around 2020. NASA Science Mission Directorate allows student collaborations on its space missions. And these are to provide hands-on learning across the life cycle of flight or instrument projects where students can design, build, test and operate space missions or instruments. Purdue has a student team that is looking at the camera that is going to be used to do topographical analysis of the sail while it's being used by the spacecraft. The Purdue students are being involved by developing the software for using the camera, developing the settings required to be useful during the mission and by doing environmental testing on the camera unit. I wanted to participate in this VIP course because I felt that I previously did not have enough project experience to make me competitive for internships or co-ops that I was looking for at the time and I also wanted to have more teamwork in general. I chose the solar sail VIP course because I've always been interested in space and propulsion has kind of been an interest of mine, so I saw solar sail and I'm like, I want to join this. I'm in computer engineering, but I'm really interested in the aerospace field so I thought this would give me a good look into that. This VIP course has really given me a lot of experience working with small teams and large teams and having team collaboration with each other. I think that's very important in industry and in the real world. I'm really learning a lot about all hands-on research. I didn't really know what the word meant before I came into the course. I've learned a lot more about time management and effective research skills. Those are the two biggest things I've taken away from this so far. I'm also learning how to present data in front of my peers and our mentors every week. During this course I've learned a lot about teamwork and working with other people to get toward targets and goals that we set for ourselves and a lot about cameras. This project is very multidisciplinary. We have students from aerospace engineering, electrical and computer engineering. We have mechanical engineers. We have industrial engineers. We also have first-year engineering students. The VIP program turned out to be an ideal platform for engaging students from diverse educational backgrounds, from various majors, from first-year engineering students all the way to graduate students. It also gives a structure for evaluation of student learning outcomes and that was one of the criteria for including student collaborations. My personal goals are to become more confident in software development. We're working on a Python project right now so I'm really excited about that. For example, this semester I'm learning solid works and we're going to be doing simulation testing, thermal radiation and some vibration testing as well. It's really cool for students to be able to work on a project that is an actual mission, especially one that is going to test the largest solar sail. It is especially cool for the students that they get to have video conferences with NASA engineers and get to ask questions, get to learn from NASA engineers. I also want to have more experience working in a semi-corporate setting. For example, we have bi-weekly meetings with our contacts at NASA where we give them updates and we listen to their suggestions and we take that into account when we go back into our next two weeks of work for this project. Not every day do you get to say I have a call with NASA later. Getting to work with our subteams and have update meetings and have a manager talk to us and give us recommendations is very helpful when preparing me for the real world. I have been really enjoying the freedom that comes with this course of being able to see a goal that's a month or two out and then plan how we want to reach that goal and then actually achieve that. So you're really creating something new with this and it's a very nice hands-on experience that you're going to get before you even have an internship or even have any sort of job. I love the mentors. Kate gives really great advice about graduate school and I also love the community of being on the research team. It's a fun project and they really enjoy it. I would highly recommend this course to any student who's looking for a hands-on project to work on. This really has given me great experience when it comes to working with real-world scenarios and real project management skills. To other students, I would say do it. It's a great experience and it is definitely a different take on school. It's going to be much more hands-on and like I said, very much more student-led. My advice for students who are thinking about taking this course is 100% go for it.