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Maple Seed

Deployable Rotor System for Spacecraft Landing

 

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Membership level
2011-2012 Team
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Team Name
Maple Seed
Project Title
Deployable Rotor System for Spacecraft Landing
Design Challenge
Working in collaboration with Johnson Space Center, design and test a deployment mechanism for telescoping rotors to replace conventionally-used parachutes on an Apollo-style space capsule, for atmospheric reentry.
Design Summary
Team Maple Seed has designed a scale model of a rotocapsule, with a stepper motor driven worm gear deployment mechanism. Upon receipt of an RC signal, the worm gear is driven by an MSP430 microcontroller to deploy the rotors smoothly over three seconds. During the deployment, strain gauges mounted at the roots of the rotors relay data back to the MSP430, which stores it and sends it to a PC after testing. This data is converted into moment coefficients, to be compared against the aerodynamic behavior predicted by NASA.
Sponsors
NASA/JSC
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Department(s)
  • Mechanical Engineering
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Faculty Advisor 1 - Name
Andrew Meade

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