Evaluation of the Educational Impact of Participation Time in a Small Spacecraft Development Program

The value of the duration of participation in a small spacecraft program has not previously been sufficiently characterized. This work seeks to determine whether most relevant benefits are received by participants quickly (suggesting that participant education would be best achieved by shorter duration exposure to multiple domains) or accrues over time (suggesting that prolonged work on a single project would be most beneficial). The experiences of the student participants in the OpenOrbiter Small Spacecraft Development Initiative at the University of North Dakota are analyzed in an attempt to answer this question. To this end, correlation between the duration of program participation and the level of benefit received (across five categories) is assessed herein.