Launch Campaign - Day 10, Launch of REXUS 13!

Seeing the Launch getting cancelled with shifting blue skies did not make us very confident when we woke up early in the morning and realized it was snowing. But the winds were calm the only problem was the bad sight that could affect the recovery of the rocket. The major part of the team came to the radar hill a few minutes before 5.30 am (the rest had to stay at the ground station).

Not too convincing weather

At 5.30 there was a planned hold for 15 min in the countdown to await the launch window and examine the weather conditions.

Fortunately we could see the haze decreased and the weather got clearer simultaneously as the winds remained calm – we began to hope. At 5.45 the announced that the countdown could be resumed and now we know that only critical weather changes could stop the countdown.

The upcoming 15 minutes were very exciting and nervous:

T - 10m Experiment power is switched on.
T - 8m SOLAR is armed and ready for launch
T - 2m We confirm our readiness for flight
T - 0 Lift off!

So the launch did happen and can be seen here:

At this moment the Esrange crew had done their job and the quality of our still had to be proven:

T + 90s Soldering starts
T + 600s End of flight.

So far so good, the soldering had been performed. But how about the pressure in our chambers? To call the flight successful we had to get vacuum in the vacuum chamber and not lose too much pressure in our pressurized chamber. Regarding the pressurized chamber we hoped for a pressure drop less than 20% ideally below 10%. The results were visualized directly in our ground station:

SOLAR Ground Station - revealing the first flight results

As seen in the pressure graphs the experiment performed really well. The pressure dropped immediately in the vacuum chamber and in the pressurized chamber the pressure did not drop but INCREASED (due to the increased temperature during the soldering).

The (so far) very successful flight was celebrated with a champagne breakfast while the recovery mission started. We still had one concern; had all samples been melted?

After roughly 2.5 hours the helicopter landed on Esrange again carrying the rockets payload.

Due to a main parachute failure and a landing in 35 m/s the nosecone of the rocket was a bit demolished as seen in the picture, but fortunately all experiments had survived the flight.

The REXUS 13 payload immediately after the recovery

"I think you belong to Gryffindor Team SOLAR"

The rocket was disassembled and we could soon start our own disassembly. We opened the chambers one by one and found the following results beneath the hats:

Results for pressurized chamber - looking good!

Results for vacuum chamber - looking good!

As you can see all samples melted as planned and a successful flight was a fact. You can also see how the samples looks like before and after flight here

During the evening we had dinner and a hilarious launch party, which can be summarized with one picture:

Launch Campaign - Day 9, Launch of REXUS 13 ... NOT!

At the eight day the countdown was scheduled to start at 9 am, which it did. The weather seemed to be fine and the sky shifted in blue, but due to heavy winds the countdown was held at T-15m to await better weather. However the winds kept blowing and the resume of the countdown was postponed gradually.

Nice weather for a rocket launch you might think

At approximately 2 pm (playing cards) we heard the insane warning horns and assumed that the countdown was about to resume. We went quickly to the car and drove to the radar hill. At the radar hill we unfortunately realized that the horns did not have anything with the resume of the countdown to do and shortly after that we were also told that the countdown had been cancelled  for the day. The new time for the countdown was set to 3.45 am the next day.

Regarding the warning horns, they almost deserve a blog post for themselves. It’s the craziest sound I’ve ever heard and made me leave the ground more than once. You can think of it as a  very boosted horn of gondor.

Boosted horn of Gondor

Launch Campaign - Day 7-8, Launch of REXUS 14

On the seventh day of the launch campaign the launch of our sister rocket REXUS 14 was scheduled. Due to winds the launch was preliminary postponed to around 2 pm. unfortunately the winds did not calm and the countdown was cancelled and a new time was set; 3:45 am in the morning (night?) next day.

Team SOLAR arrived to the radar hill with a bit too few hours of sleep at approximately 5.30 am with 15 minutes left of the countdown. The winds were still okay, but a hold for 15 min was done to await the launch window at 6 am. After the hold and the remaining 15 min of countdown we could see the rocket fly through the sky and disappear into the clouds. It was really cool and made all of us even more excited about our own upcoming launch.

A video made by one of the teams; the Space Sailors, can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkqIoaSVnYo

It shows the deployment of their space sail and additionally some really nice pictures of the Earth seen from above! Watch it, I bet that even a blind person would find it awesome!

Due to the very early launch, we were hopeful that they might plan to launch our rocket as well later during the day, but we were later on told that the launch was scheduled to 11 am the next day, meaning a start of the countdown at 9 am.

After the launch we went to a very special cemetry nearby the launching area:

Rocket left overs

During the recovery of REXUS 14, our rocker REXUS 13 was rolled out and placed at the launcher.

Credit: StrathSat-R
REXUS 13, carrying our experiment is being rolled out and installed on the... 

Credit: REXUS/BEXUS
                          ....launcher!                             .

Over and Out!

Team SOLAR

Launch Campaign - Day 4-6, Final Testing and Payload Assembly

As planned the bench test was performed during the fourth day of the launch campaign with all experiments performing well. Due to the successful test the flight simulation could be scheduled to the day after.

After a good night’s sleep  Team SOLAR was ready for an early flight simulation, but very unexpectedly the test could not be performed as early as expected and this day offered some card games as well. Fortunately the simulation could be performed with good results a few hours later.

The difference between the bench test and the flight simulation is that the real ground station in Esrange’s main building was used during the flight simulation to simulate the real flight as good as possible.

Credit: REXUS/BEXUS
SOLAR Ground Station                          

After the final tests the last modules could be assembled creating the payload of REXUS 13.

Credit: REXUS/BEXUS

The payloads of REXUS 14 and 13       

During the Sunday the staff took a day off and we could relax before the upcoming flights during the next week.

Day 2-4, the masters of card games

And here we thought launch campaign was a lot of work!

Day 2 of the launch campaign was quite slow. We started the day with doing a simple assembly of the experiment to hook it up to the service module where we did a com-test. In practice this means we check that the communication from our experiment through the service module to the ground station works.

The test ran smoothly so we did final assembly where we assembled the experiment with lock tight and predetermined torque. We then made sure everything was connected as per our procedures. Another com-test confirmed that all connections were still good.

This was all done in the morning which meant we had to wait for the bench test the next day. The rest of the day then mostly involved playing cards.

Final assembly

Day 3 was the day for the bench test. The test was set at 13:00 so we set up our ground station and then waited with some card playing. The time for the bench test then changed to 14:00 then 9:00 the next day, One of the other experiments were having trouble so they would have the night to resolve it. So there was no use putting the cards away.

The team playing cards

Day 4, morning meeting, today is the bench test which is set at 10:00, then after lunch, then 14:00. But as I'm  writing this the bench test is actually being set up. So hopefully the test will start soon and we can start setting up for flight simulation which well be done tomorrow.

The experiments being lined up for bench test. Notice how one experiment is still missing.

Launch Campaign - Day 1

During this project we've followed something I'd like to call the SOLAR sine wave. Everything is going perfect until something happens which will make you think "it's all over". The problem then get's solved and your on top of the world again. The launch campaign is no exception apparently.

Yesterday the day started with us dismounting the experiment since we had to change the screws after the bumpy transportation to ESRANGE. That included taking apart the electronics box to see if the micro-SD stored the data as expected. It did, all was well and dandy so we screwed back PCB's into the box. In the meantime we tested out our backup PCB's which had been soldered just last week. For some reason these cards wouldn't let us program the micro controller. We tested the lines on the board but they all seemed fine so we came to the conclusion that it must be the new CPU that is corrupt. Not to fear, we brought a spare and we spent an hour removing the old CPU and soldering on the new one. Of course that did not work either! Well at least we had our flight PCB's functioning, or did we? We switched back to the our old electronics that's been working fine since January but we could not communicate with it from our ground station. Now was the time to panic. After trying everything we took to an old trick, restart the computer. We launched the ground station again and there we go everything is working as expected.

Björn soldering the new micro controller

So what was the problem? It seems the com port we were using on the computer had somehow latched up when trying to program the backup PCB's. Because the compiler didn't get a response from the micro controller it never closed the port. This was later confirmed by reproducing the scenario.

It was still the matter of the backup PCB's though. Why were we unable to program them? We had a lunch to think it over where the payload manager Mikael Inga suggested it might be a different component connected to the programming pins that's causing the problem. The only other component connected to the programming pins was the micro-SD card so we tried removing it worked. We then put the micro-SD back and tried programming again and what do you know that worked as well!

The PCB's that caused all the problem. The PCB with the micro controller is underneath the one displayed.

We're still not quite sure what caused this problem but it could be that some solder in the micro-SD bracket that got removed by taking the card out.

So everything was working great until we once again got the problem that we didn't receive any data to the ground station. After error searching for about two hours we realized we had forgotten to turn the power on.

To brush of an old chestnut, "it's not rocket science"

Final preparation before integration week

 After a long and well deserved Christmas break the team is once again in place and working on the experiment. The experiment is fully functional and is mostly verified. So one might expect that we could lean back and enjoy our wonderful work now, but there's a lot more to be done before we can ship our experiment to Bremen in the end of January.

 

Some of our main points are:

 

• Create the box for shipping the experiment
• Do vibration test with new PCB's
• Prepare the rocket module with covers over the venting holes
• Produce multiple sets of soldering setups for integration week
• Do multiple end to end test with complete system
• Make PCB's flight ready
• Implement temperature monitoring of battery packs during charging
• Implement the sd-backup system

So understandably the team will have to work at full speed for the following two weeks. We are however confident that all the major points will be sorted once it is time to ship everything.

Once the experiment has been sent to Bremen we will send down two team members both named Björn. They are experts on the electrical and software system in SOLAR and could hopefully resolve and issues we could have during integration.
The integration week is pretty much what it sounds like, our experiment will be integrated with the other experiments and the rocket service module to make sure all the interface between different parts of the rocket works as expected.

If we have no major faults in our design the experiment will remain in Bremen before being sent to Oberpfaffenhofen outside Munich. There it will undergo a series of test to verify the flight readiness of our experiment.

So that's what we're working towards right now.
We'll try to get another update out sometime during this week, if not on the blog at least on our facebook page.

Have a nice day :)

 

EAR

So yesterday we had our EAR (Experiment Acceptance Review) and we welcomed Mikael Inga and Alex Kinnaird back to Kiruna! We started off by presenting the updated and improved parts since the IPR and also our last steps before we can send the experiment to Germany for testing. After that we had a demonstration of the actual experiment where we melted six samples and explained the course of events during the flight. We were very happy with both the presentation and demonstration and we hope Mikael and Alex felt the same way :)

Whats left to do for the team right now is to improve every last detail and solve the last minor issues. We will also focus on writing detailed checklists for launch campaign so that we are fully prepared!

We would also like to congratulate the teams on REXUS-11 for the successful launch campaign that took place last week! We are kinda jealous but we hope to join the club in May next year! :D 

ps. check out our team t-shirts!

 The rocket module was tried out and voila, fits like a glove!

 Discussion and time for questions

 Maja and Johanna are admiring the experiment

 The experiment mounted on the bulk head with the candy-looking
power resistors in the electronics box.

 

Today another saturday is spent in the school for the team members living in Kiruna. Todays tasks are to make the last minor adjustments, make the final assembly and perform the final vacuum and thermal tests.

Except that, all preparations have to be made for our EAR that we have at monday morning. We feel that we have got some really positive results since the IPR, hopefully Alex and Mikael will share this opinion.

Here you can see the major part of the experiment while Björn is working on the final assembly before the thermal tests.

The story of Johanna and deadlines

After both exams and halloween celebration we are now working towards our deadline set on the 19th of November when the entire experiment shall be ready for shipping to Germany. The actual shipping will not take place until later but we want to have some time to work on last minute details and refinement.

Our first goal is the SED-submission due on monday the 12th so we figure there will be some late nights and weekend work for the team.

Our work right now is mainally to finish all soldering, PCB-manufacturing and procedure-documentation parallel with several tests. I managed to get a short interview with one of the team members, Johanna!


This is Johanna!

Johanna is working with the mechanics-team. Her work includes FEA-simulations, PCB-manufacturinga and battery insulation. She is studying towards a master in aero space engineering. Her favorite food is moose steak with potatoes and bearnaise sauce and she likes to walk around with a backpack in the forest. Her interests also includes skiing and making snow-angels.

So, Johanna, how is the work coming along?
- There are mostly refinement work left in the mechanics group and we are actually beginning to see the end!

What would you say is the best thing with Project SOLAR?
I would say that the education and team work is the best parts of the project. I learn new things all the time when it comes to project planning and engineering which I think will be a great experience in the  future.

What is the most difficult part of the project?
The communication can be quite a challenge since we have a pretty big team (14 people!)....we are all study at the same time with different schedules so the planning is hard sometimes. I´m impressed that we managed to pull it off during the entire project with meetings, deadlines etc. and there is no stopping us now!
What will you think when YOUR experiment is fired away onboard the sounding rocket?
I will be very happy of course to have actually made it to the end! I will also be very nervous about the outcome of the experiment; will something go wrong? did we forget something? what if this or that happens?
So mostly happy but a little bit nevous!



Is this Johannas life-long dream?

And how is life in the small city of Kiruna?
The surrounding nature is fantastic with the mountains and forest. The view from our school is beatiful now when there is snow on the trees and clear blue sky. The institute of space physics is right next door which is a great benefit when we have technical questions.
But I must say that there could be more people, a warmer climate and a McDonalds....then I would never leave!




Do you have any advice to those who want to start a project?Find a good group of people that you trust and that you can work with through both good and bad times. Make a good and realistic time-plan and what to do if something goes wrong. Have FUN and encourage each other.

Last question, who is your favorite team member in the group?
I would have to say Anneli, since she is so smart, funny, good-looking and a great friend!

Interview done by Anneli

First vibration test

Good evening!

Last week we performed our first vibration test, where we tested our vacuum chamber, the D-SUB holder and our electronics box with the PCB's. Dummy weights were placed on each PCB to simulate the weight of the actual components we will use. This first test was performed to see that our main structures could withstand the expected vibrations from the rocket. We also wanted to ensure that the PCB's with the dummy weights would not crack due to the vibrations (I guess that the electronics group would have gone mad if we broke their real PCB's during the "real" and final vibration test).

The test was done in four steps:

1. We made a sine sweep at 0.25g to search for eigen-frequencies.

2. We made a sinusodial test at Qualification Level i.e. at 4g.

3. We made a random vibration test at Acceptance Level i.e. at 6 grms.

4. We made an additional sine sweep at 0.25 g to compare to the first one to see if the structures had changed (different or modified eigen frequencies).

The results were good and all parts still seems to be alive. However the two graphs from the sine sweeps was not identical, but we found that one of our dummy weights almost was loose, which probably explains the unequality of the graphs.

Here is the experiment mounted on the shaker before the test

We are also happy to give you a video of the sinusodial test (2)

Unfortunately the quality was deteriorated after the transfer from my phone, but hopefully you can enjoy it anyway.

In the beginning the frequencies are low and you can see the vibrations clearly, but at the end the experiment seems to be stationary. This is due to the high frequencies (ca 2000 Hz), so actually it is oscillating extremely fast, or more exactly; ca 2000 times/sec.

Bye!

Hello!

As we promised we will give you a picture of our final layout:

This is all parts attached to our own simplified bulkhead that we use during the testing phase as we wait for the real bulkhead to be delivered.

We performed a first vibration test this week which I will tell you more about, but we save that for another post. Now I have to make some adjustments in the SED.

Ciao!

Use copper plates, we said.. It´ll be easy, we said...

The copper plates are driving med mad!! (Mad , I tell you MAD!!)  A fairly easy part of the experiment we all assumed but manufacture these all by our selves have been a highly time consuming process. And we just COULD NOT get it right! (stop laughing! :P)  We do however believe that a working procedure have FINALLY been determined and hopefully we´ll be able to produce several approved copper plates to be used in the upcoming test phase! (Hurrah!!)

Let me guide you all through the evolution of the seemingly harmless copper plate (from hell!) :P

Copper plate v1.0 - 1.3: we went from "punched holes" (= the wavy plate) to drilled holes. To drill in a straight line was apparently much harder than predicted but we did manage to drill straight at the end, unfortunately with the holes not located were they were supposed to be!

Failure 1,2 and 3... 

And what happens when the holes are NOT EXACTLY where they are supposed to be? well, the SCREWS don´t fit as planed!

what NOT to look like... 

We figured; hmm maybe I (Maja) was not the best person to drill in these plates so Robert tried...

Robert vs. plate: 0-1

... and Johanna tried...

Johanna vs. plate: 0-2

...AND Johan tried: Johan vs. plate: 0-3

WE JUST COULD NOT WIN THIS BATTLE!!!

Failure 10, 23 and 101...

UNTIL we finally had a template that wouldn´t betray us! Secured with monkey wrenches, the copper plates are hereby looking according to plan and the experiment tests can proceed without delay! (Hallelujah!)

The Template

Behold! the screws are not in contact with each other and all copper plates now look the same

Thank You all for listening! You´ve been great!

Don´t forget to stay tune for the test phase and remember to tell your friends to like us on facebook! ;) 

Hej då!

Good evening.

First of all we're sorry for the low blog activity the last weeks. Fortunately we have a "good" reason for that; we've been working really hard and can now see the end of the building phase. Our plan is to be done with the building on Monday and after that enter the testing phase for about one month.

Due to the poor updating about the mechanic parts we will go through them step by step.

The Chambers

Here are our chambers consisting of two hats and two bases. The chambers have been manufactured by a local company

Here is the internal layout of the chambers, with the experimental PCB to the right and the sensor PCB to the left, which we've made ourselves.

Before Monday all PCBs will be installed in the chambers using helicoils and the inlet hole for the pressurized chamber must be sealed.

Electronics Box

This is the electronics box we will use with two test-PCBs for the first vibration test. The electronics box shell was ordered from a company, but we have done all adjustments and the angle braces. Before Monday there are two more d-sub contact outlets that are to be made.

Battery Housing

This is the protective house for our two battery packs which was manufactured by us. The batteries will be well insulated against vibrations and the cold using soft insulation pads between the batteries and the walls.

T-rex

For lack of good names; this is T-rex. It will work as a link between the electronics box and the chambers for the d-sub cables. This is because we did not have enough space available on the electronics box itself. T-rex was manufactured by us as well.

Bulkhead for testing

Since we will receive the real bulkhead in mid November, we decided to make our own. This is because we will need it during the testing phase. The test bulkhead is a bit simplified compared to the real one, but will hopefully perform equally in the tests. The bulkhead was manufactured by IRF (our neighbours at school). Before Monday all holes will be drilled and tapped.

If you stay updated on the blog I promise to show you the final layout, i.e. all parts attached to the test bulkhead at the beginning of next week.

During the testing phase we promise to have more activity on the blog with pictures, videos etc.

After this quite massive and facts concentrated posts, we hope you are up to date again in terms of the mechanics group's work in Project SOLAR

/The Mechanics Group