PSAS Current Status as of November 2008

After the proof-of-concept success and then complete loss of LV2 in the August 2005 Bend, OR launch, we are rebuilding (faster, better, stronger?) the LV2 airframe and avionics system. We're calling it 'LV2c'.

Airframe

Nose Separation Ring

This was the first component designed, since the nose separation charge was the failure point of our previous launch. Dan constructed a Nose Separation Ring (NSR) which is hermetically sealed using superglue, trapping the oxidizer and confining the explosion to a much smaller volume. This has been ready since mid-2007.

We have recently been testing it with single charges (it is designed to have four charges, but to separate with only one for redundancy). Two tests have so far not succeeded to separate the nosecone.

Modules

Dan constructed several aluminum 5.5" modules back in February 2008, enough for two complete airframes! The motor housings are also complete. Aside from the dimensions (LV2 had 5" sections), they have the same shape as LV2.

Aeroshell

Tim has been experimenting with vacuum assisted resin transfer molding for the aeroshell. He has run eight tests, each better than the last.

Nosecone

The fiberglass nosecone has been fabricated. The nosecone itself has an aluminum tip in this design.

Fins

Dave finished the fins in October.

Chutes

In October, Tim found an industrial seamster to construct the drogue and main chutes. The suspension lines have yet to be sewn. After that we plan to do a "truck test", and perhaps after that a "pumpkin test".

Avionics

The 2006 PSAS Capstone team has finished their design of the USB-based node front end. We're in the process of laying it out. We're also working on GPL-GPS to integrate into our avionics system.

Our first launch scheduled for 2008 is mainly for testing our new airframe. We will only be flying an Amateur Television (ATV) module with 2.4 GHz downlink, and a commercial flight computer.

Two Capstone teams will be working on our avionics in 2008-2009! One group will work on the recovery node and one on the IMU node.

ATV

We have bought several ARM prototyping boards for developing the various nodes. Andrew, Maria, and Glenn intend to design the ATV node during July 2008.

Frank has been working on the "BOB4" board for the ATV.

Software

We intend to design new flight computer software to run on our new PowerPC flight computer (a contractual obligation due to a grant from IBM). We have had years of trouble trying to select an appropriate PPC board and get a stock Debian kernel running on this PPC hardware.

In the meantime, the Software team has mainly been working on side projects, such as converting the website to ikiwiki (8 months), software simulators (6 months ongoing), and other open source projects. The simulator has undergone a lot of work during October and November. It now operates in full ECF and WGS-84 coordinate systems.