The Rocket Mocs have plans to ascend to new heights. The team, comprised of junior and senior mechanical engineering students in the UTC College of Engineering and Computer Science, has been accepted into the 2025 Student Launch Challenge—an annual competition sponsored by NASA—for the seventh consecutive year.
Up, up and away: UTC student shares his NASA internship experience
Ever since he was little, Ian Tidwell has loved space. After high school, he decided that he wanted to go to space himself. When the opportunity to intern for NASA appeared in the spring of 2023, Tidwell, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, jumped at the chance. He traveled to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to work in field operations as part of a team creating screen displays for ground control.