“I’m moving to Boston in three weeks!” At my high school graduation, I had just learned I’d been accepted into the Interphase EDGE program, an incredible opportunity to acclimate to life at MIT before the 2022 school year began.
I was glad to have that chance, since I faced a big change from life at home in Claremore, on the Cherokee Nation reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. I’d been away on my own only once, on a fifth-grade trip to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, where I first fell in love with aerospace engineering.
It didn’t take long to find community on campus. To my surprise, out of the dozen students at a welcome event for the Indigenous community, three grad students and an undergrad were in the aero-astro department. As a prospective Course 16 major and a FIRST Robotics alum, I was excited to discover that they planned to start a new team for the First Nations Launch (FNL) rocketry competition, a NASA Artemis Student Challenge. It was the perfect opportunity to merge my technical passion with my cultural roots.
That first year, many people questioned the need for our team. “MIT already has a Rocket Team,” they’d say. But while most build teams are defined by the specific projects they work on, the product is just one aspect of the experience.
Yes, I’ve learned to design, build, launch, and safely recover a model rocket. But doing that alongside other Indigenous engineers on the team we call MIT Doya (ᏙᏯ, Cherokee for beaver) has taught me more than engineering skills. Beyond learning how to work with composites or design fins, I’ve learned how to navigate classes and connect with professors. I’ve learned about grad school. And I’ve learned how to celebrate my Indigenous identity and honor my ancestors with my work. For instance, we often hold smudging ceremonies—burning sage to purify ourselves or our rockets—at our team meetings and competitions.
Our team emphasizes universal consensus and buy-in on the technical side and pays attention to the success of each team member on a personal level. We call this gadugi (ᎦᏚᎩ) in Cherokee, or “everyone helping each other.”
I’ve also learned that embracing my culture can offer a better approach to engineering challenges. While many engineering settings foster top-down decision-making, our team tests and incorporates as many ideas as possible to engage everyone, emphasizing universal consensus and buy-in on the technical side while paying attention to the success of each team member on a personal level. We call this gadugi (ᎦᏚᎩ) in Cherokee, or “everyone helping each other.” And we find it’s led to better technical results—and a better experience for everyone on the team.
I feel incredibly fortunate to work closely with other Indigenous students on an engineering project we all deeply care about. I’ve looked up to the senior members of the team, seeing in them proof of what an Indigenous student at MIT can be and accomplish. And I’ve loved mentoring newer members, passing along what I’ve learned to help them excel.
Our launch weekends expand our community further, allowing us to work alongside inspiring Indigenous engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and Blue Origin. I’ve gotten to meet my heroes and seen that it’s possible to succeed as a Native American in aerospace engineering. In fact, my FNL experiences have already helped me secure an amazing internship. Last summer—exactly a decade after setting my heart on aerospace engineering at Space Camp—I returned to Huntsville as a lunar payloads intern on the Mark I Lunar Lander at Blue Origin.
Through the FNL team, I’ve significantly advanced my technical skills. As our systems and simulations lead the first year, I integrated all the components of the physical design into a cohesive computer model with accuracy in both geometry and mass distribution. From that model, I can run simulated flights while adjusting for various launch conditions and trying out different motors. A small change on the ground can yield a big change in our final altitude, which must be within a specific range—so this analysis drives the overall design.
In our first year, our challenge was to re-create the design of a kit rocket while making it lighter by fabricating all the parts ourselves, primarily using hand-laid carbon fiber and fiberglass. We finished in second place and were named Rookie Team of the Year.
For 2023–’24, our challenge was to build a rocket large enough to carry a deployable drone, leading us to build an airframe 7.5 inches in diameter. We also had to design and fabricate the drone’s chassis to meet strict specifications: It had to fit inside the rocket on the launchpad, deploy at apogee (ours was 2,136 feet), unfold from a compact stowed configuration to 16 by 16 inches, descend by parachute to 500 feet, and then release the parachute for piloted navigation to a landing pad. To meet FAA requirements, two of our team members studied for and earned Part 107 remote pilot certificates so they could operate the drone.
Since this new challenge required us to fabricate a rocket while also designing and building the drone, we broke up into two subteams to work on both in parallel. This approach required precise coordination between the subteams to ensure that everything would integrate well for the final launch. As team captain, I managed this coordination while staying involved on the technical side as systems and simulations lead and airframe lead. And as we worked our way through the project milestones from proposal through flight readiness review, we kept in mind that we needed both an operational drone and a safe flight to the right altitude to meet the challenge.
In April our team traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to put our rocket to the test. We loaded the parachutes and payload, blessing it with some medicine before sending our hard work into the sky. But when I went to load our motor, the motor mount fell off in my hand. We quickly proceeded to the range safety officer, who was able to salvage our rocket and our launch with the last-minute addition of an external motor retention device. After that minor (but almost catastrophic) delay, we had a safe launch and successful recovery—and earned the Next Step Award, a $15,000 grant to represent FNL in the University Student Launch Initiative, a NASA-hosted competition open to everyone, for the 2024–’25 season.
Six weeks later, when the overall competition winners were announced, we were thrilled to learn we had won the grand prize! Along with bragging rights, we won a VIP trip to Kennedy Space Center in August and got to walk through the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building, explore the shuttle landing strip, see Polaris Dawn on the launchpad, and watch a Starlink launch from the beach in the early morning hours.
This year, I’m honored to serve as team captain again, leading an expanded team as we tackle the challenges of the new Student Launch Initiative. I’m already looking forward to May, when we’ll launch the rocket we’ll be perfecting between now and then. And to honor our Indigenous heritage and send it into the sky with good intentions, I’ll make sure we smudge before flight.
Hailey Polson ’26, an aero-astro major and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is captain of MIT’s First Nations Launch team.
