NR aerospace logo with a blue aircraft swoosh

NICK RODRIGUEZ

AEROSPACE ENGINEER

STRUCTURES / MANUFACTURING / SPACE SYSTEMS

LINKEDIN ↗

PROJECTS

Ideas made tangible.

Selected work from research, space systems, and student engineering. Deeper case studies and original project files can follow.

Concept illustration of automated fiber placement on a curved composite structure
Automated fiber placement concept artwork

MANUFACTURING / RESEARCH

Automated fiber placement

Operating and maintaining AFP equipment at NIAR ATLAS, alongside aerospace materials research, design studies, and structural and thermal analysis.

NIAR ATLAS · 2022–present

01   SPACE INSTRUMENTATION

Infrared imaging instrument

Designed and prototyped a remotely operated instrument to capture asteroid thermal signatures, then tested the system in a laboratory vacuum chamber.

NASA Lucy Internship · 2021

02   MISSION ANALYSIS

CubeSats for wildfire monitoring

Explored an orbital constellation for a localized region using GMAT, STK, and MATLAB; prepared a research paper and conference presentation.

WSU Astrodynamics Laboratory · 2022

03   ROCKETRY

High-powered rocket systems

Payload and avionics design, structural analysis, fabrication, and launch as part of a team that placed fourth in the Spaceport America Cup payload challenge.

Final Frontier · 2020–2021

PROJECT GALLERY

AIRCRAFT PROJECT

Shake & Lake

From aircraft design to flight and a team project showcase.

EARLIER PORTFOLIO

Project video archive

Videos from the original site, preserved while deeper case studies are prepared.