PROJECT SUMMARY

CTRL+V was the successor to Poise, the sophomore design project of the 2018-2019 sophomore class which launched in January 2020. The goal of the project was to facilitate knowledge transfer, USCRPL heritage, and workmanship to the next generation of rocketeers. USCRPL collaborated with BPS.space to make the launch of CTRL+V happen safely during a global pandemic in addition to flying their AVA avionics unit.

avionics

CTRL+V was the first flight of USCRPL’s new ‘pancake’ style HAMSTER avionics unit. The unique pancake design allows for the unit’s PCBs to better fit inside the rocket’s nosecone and accommodate the recovery unit’s CO2 canister, further compressing the volume needed for Avionics and Recovery. In addition to featuring a more compact design, the unit also features upgrades over our last unit designed for Traveler IV. These include more optimized flight software and considerably more accurate accelerometers, as well as the new FPGA Black Box pancake. This board uses a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to combine data from several gyros and magnetometers, and attempts to produce an accurate, high-frequency orientation reading under flight conditions. The result of these upgrades was the most data ever collected on a USCRPL flight coming from nine separate sensors.

Recovery

USCRPL revisited dual deployment with a revamped parachute deployment design on CTRL+V. After actively deploying the nose cone by releasing compressed CO2 with a signal given by the avionics unit, the drogue parachute was to be pulled from the airframe. The main parachute was constrained inside of the airframe against the recovery bulkhead. The main improvement in this dual deployment design compared to past attempts was a new external electronics unit that was attached to the recovery bulkhead, and was used to send a charge to a pair of wire cutters to actively release the main parachute when the designated altitude was reached.

A double failure mode was experienced: the pyrotechnic wire cutters were damaged before flight, making them unable to cut through the nylon rope tying off the main parachute, and both ravens malfunctioning. Due to the nature of both of these failure modes, the result was the main parachute not deploying at the designated altitude. Because the drogue chute was slightly over-sized to accommodate for the potential of the main parachute not deploying, the vehicle was still recovered in pristine condition.

PAYLOAD

CTRL+V featured USCRPL’s first external payload. BPS.space collaborated with USCRPL to not only launch CTRL+V but also fly their AVA flight computer. We hope that this collaboration is the first of many between USCRPL and other companies and university groups.

FLIGHT