With our upcoming teleconference next Monday, we have been practicing our Preliminary Design Review presentation multiple times throughout this week. Each member of the team is assigned specific sections from the following: Introduction, Systems, Overview, Sensor Subsystem Design, Descent Control Design, Mechanical Subsystem Design, Communications and Data Handling, Electrical Power Subsystem Design, Flight Software Design, Ground Control System, Integration and Testing, Mission Operations and Analysis, Requirements Compliance, and Management.

We decided to practice presenting on Zoom, which is the platform the competition will use for the Preliminary Design Review teleconference. In our first practice run, we discovered that our presentation had gone almost two minutes over the thirty minute limit we had for the official teleconference. We discussed the flaws in our first presentation which included talking pace, tone of voice, and slide transitions. Afterwards, we required each individual to practice presenting their sections on their own, so we could improve on our next practice presentation.

Our second and third presentation practice runs showed great improvement. Every presenter was able to talk about their sections with a good pace and tone while including additional information that was not displayed on the Google Slides presentation. The transitions from each slide and from different presenters were also much smoother than in the first run. Because everyone became more comfortable with presenting their sections, we were able to finish our presentation with five minutes to spare; this will allot time for the judges to ask us any questions or comments that they have.

After hours of practicing the Preliminary Design Review presentation individually and collaboratively, we feel very prepared and confident for the competition teleconference during Week 8. Luckily, we were able to schedule the conference to take place the same time as our weekly Monday meetings. We plan to have one official computer to use for the teleconference along with two backup computers in case there are any technical difficulties.

Soon, we will know the results of our PDR presentation and, hopefully, learn that we will be one of the forty teams to compete in Stephenville, Texas.

— Amy Huynh
Documentation