Fairing deployment testing

Fairing deployment testing

Postby microsat » Thu Mar 24, 2016 9:14 am

These past two months we have been testing our new fairing design. After an initial success our actuators have malfunctioned and we are considering a redesign, perhaps to a more traditional bifurcating clam shell.

All our dimensions and planned expenditures for launch far exceed those for the N-Prize since our first payloads are expected to be approximately 1U in volume though cylindrical and not a cube.

Microsat
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Re: Fairing deployment testing

Postby Jay » Mon Mar 28, 2016 1:45 am

What can you tell us about the original design? Having an "initial success" sounds like you might be on to a very good idea!

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Re: Fairing deployment testing

Postby microsat » Tue Mar 29, 2016 7:58 am

We had a metal tipped nose cone held on with a threaded rod to the bulkhead. We moved the end of the threaded rod to a bulkhead on the rocket's airframe and at the time of deployment, moved the rod forward exposing the contents of the nosecone that are then ejected with everything not meant to orbit staying with the insertion rocket to limit debris when deorbited.

Not necessary for something as small as the NPrize but for our purposes, able to deploy multiple PocketSats at different times.
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Re: Fairing deployment testing

Postby Jay » Fri Apr 01, 2016 1:21 am

Any ideas for minimizing orbital debris are definitely welcome. If you can shed the traditional clamshell fairing before reaching orbital velocity that shouldn't be a problem. Are you trying to do SpaceX one better by making the entire rocket recoverable for reuse?

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Re: Fairing deployment testing

Postby microsat » Sat Apr 02, 2016 3:33 am

We are planning on using the deployment stage as one of our payloads for a projected life of 4 months before it deorbits after all the Microsats are deployed.

What team are you on?

.
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Re: Fairing deployment testing

Postby Jay » Thu Apr 14, 2016 12:42 pm

UpStart. Excellent. Best of luck to you!

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