Student Profile: Kevin Eberhart
MS, Aerospace Engineering, May 2008
BS, Aerospace Engineering, May 2007
In addition to the rigorous academic goal of earning both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering, spring 2008 graduate Kevin Eberhart played varsity football for the Buffs throughout his time at CU. “It was demanding and I knew what I was supposed to do every minute,” said Kevin. “But I have to say it was a lot of fun.”
Kevin grew up near Boulder and remembers as a child “sitting with my parents watching CU play football.” Also he was avidly interested in rockets and space. By high school he realized that, in addition to a great football team, CU-Boulder had “an aerospace program second to none.” He applied and was accepted on a full football scholarship.
The capstone of the Aerospace Engineering undergraduate program is a group senior project. Kevin’s project, the Self Organizing Aerial Reconnaissance System (SOARS), was to design and construct an autonomous aerial vehicle and build its corresponding electronics to enable remote imaging of a series of GPS targets. In addition to incorporating principles of mathematics and engineering, he said that this project gave him an understanding of project management and systems engineering.
“It’s difficult to convey how rewarding this was. Our team spent probably eight months before we got that first target image,” Kevin said. “Then you get that image, it just pops up on your computer, and that makes all the stress, all the late nights, worth it somehow.”
“What makes the senior project possible is that there’s so much interaction with the professors. I think it’s unique. I’ve visited a lot of other schools and it’s not like that—you don’t have that direct dialog with professors.”
For his master’s degree, Kevin worked in Professor David Klaus’sLunar Module and Analog Research Station (LunarMARS) Program, whose purpose is to evaluate the potential of novel technologies for extravehicular activities on the moon. LunarMARS also built a full-scale mockup of a lunar module at the Engineering Center. Their research is conducted to aid NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration and students work in collaboration with local companies such as SpaceDev and Lockheed Martin.
Kevin helped with LunarMARS from its inception. Specifically, he explored possible solutions for lateral separation of adjoined modules on the lunar surface. He explains, “When astronauts go to the lunar surface, the vehicle they travel in is going to have many modules—an airlock module, a habitation module, an ascent module. With previous NASA technology, the lunar module cylinders separate axially so that the force vectors are opposite one another. But during the ascent stage the module is going to need to separate laterally—that’s actually something that hasn’t been done yet. I really put a lot of time into researching what’s been looked at and then putting out some concepts that identify areas that need to be studied.”
Kevin lettered in varsity football in 2004 and in 2007. He was one of three graduating Buffs to be inducted into the Hampshire Honor Society in 2008 by the NCAA. A starter placekicker, Kevin will perhaps best be remembered for a fall 2007 game where he kicked a 45-yard field goal in the final two seconds to defeat the Oklahoma Sooners, 27-24.
By graduation, Kevin had already been offered a dream job: working on NASA’s Crew Exploration Vehicle called Orion. Orion will replace the shuttle, as part of the Constellation Program to send human explorers back to the moon, and then onward to Mars and other destinations in the solar system. Its first flights are planned for early in the next decade. Kevin will be in the Systems Engineering department of Lockheed Martin Corp. in Houston at the Johnson Space Center.
“I love CU,” said Kevin. “It was one of the best decisions I ever made to come here. The people and the facilities have just been top notch.”