Friday and the Weekend

Friday was full of excitement with the Hypobaric chamber training. All the flyers (except me since I did it last year) had to be trained to recognize the signs and symptoms of hypoxia as well as learn about the effects of microgravity on the body. The students sit through a lecture in the morning that covers everything from workings in the inner ear to the dangers of hypoxia. Each flyer must stay awake during the lecture or they are not allowed to fly as well as successfully able to complete chamber training. Luckily all of our flyers passed and are ready to fly on Tuesday and Wednesday! 

Getting Ready for the Chamber

Tour of the Neutral Buoyancy Lab

Along with chamber training, the flyers and ground crew were invited to take a tour of the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. This lab houses mock ups of the entire space station. This is where they train the astronauts for mission ops and what they would exactly do up in space. We were lucky to actually be on the floor of this lab and be able to smell the chlorine of the pool. 

As the weekend followed, we continued to work on the experiment. Many last minute additions needed to be added to the chassis as well as XSAS. We've been busy over the weekend to get ready for our Test Readiness Review. More pictures and progress to come! 

Hard away at work!

~Rachel 

Day 1: Welcome and Set up

Hey all! 

We finally made it down to Houston for microgravity flight testing! A lot of exciting events are afoot! We were greeted today by many of the NASA officials who we will be working with closely for the next few days. The morning consisted of filling out paperwork and getting the chassis ready to be taken in to the hanger while the afternoon we spent testing and continuing to assemble the chassis.  

 There has been a lot of exciting improvements and will continue as the next week goes on! We'll make sure to keep you posted, enjoy the photos! Tomorrow the flyers head in for hypobaric chamber training, more info to come!

~Rachel

Summer Update

With flight week drawing near, we have been working hard to get XSAS up and running for flight! The flight crew and ground crew are here this summer working on finishing up the loose ends from the school year.

There has been a lot of progress from finals week until now. We have water-jet the first flight structure, started building and testing the chassis to test XSAS with, and have had a lot of changes to our C&DH system. The most notable is our switch to dataloggers. The original project was to develop from scratch a system that could write data to an SD Card. However, we were unaware of the challenges that faced us with trying to develop a system like this. Thus we have changed the architecture to dataloggers after a long, drawn out battle with trying to make our own datalogging system.

We currently have 23 days until we leave for Houston and a lot more testing and building ahead of us! Wish us luck and enjoy the photos of the progress we are making!

~Rachel

Assembling the first flight structure of XSAS 

Nathan working on XSAS 

Rachel soldering the LED lighting system together

Chassis Assembly 

Another View of the Chassis

Back up button pad

XSAS Demonstration and TEDP

This week each of the three teams, payload, structures, and C&DH, completed their TEDP and have worked extensively to complete the demonstration which will be held today (Monday April 26th, 2010) in the S3FL lab in the SRB building at 7PM. In this demo, we will showcase a working XSAS free-float model, the release mechanism chassis, and a basic working C&DH system. For the payload (i.e. free-float), the latching mechanism will be shown. For the structure, a working release mechanism and rotation mechanism will be showcased. Finally for the C&DH system, data will be taken from inputs (strain gauge and accelerometer) and written to an SD card. Even though it is the middle of finals period, all the students have been working diligently and long hours to reach our goal for a working demonstration model. We hope to see many of you tonight at our demonstration so don't miss it!

Vivek Kumar
EPS & C&DH Team LEad

Semester's End and TEDP

Last Saturday we had our last Outreach event which was a major success. Thank you to all the students and people who helped make this a great program. With classes coming to an end and our TEDP, Test Equipment Data Package, just around the corner, we’ll be busier than ever before. Most of our prototype is built and the chassis, electronics, and payload groups are making their way to a final ground testing rig. Our biggest focus remains on the highly important report, TEDP, which tests if XSAS is ready to fly or not. Most of the report has already been completed, however, the entire report needs to be finalized and each section needs to be carefully revised.

The payload and structure teams now have a completely built prototype and troubleshooting we will be focused with troubleshooting over the coming days. We will be manufacturing more parts as well so that we can meet the demand of a flight unit and chassis for all of our different components. Once these are completed we can move to test XSAS as a whole. With everyone’s exams and final school year preparations happening this week and the next, we still somehow manage to make strong progress on our project.  From me and the entire XSAS team, we thank you for following our program and hope that you continue to follow us over the summer as we complete XSAS and head for microgravity testing. 

Kyle Hagen

Payload and Structures Sub-Team

More Outreach and XSAS developments

So we had our second to last outreach event for the middle schoolers this past Saturday, and it went successfully. Out of all the team members who came to volunteer, we split into two separate groups to handle two different activities. The first activity was modifying and continuing to test the rovers outside while the second activity was to work and finish the powerpoint presentations. For the presentations, the students will present to their parents, XSAS team members, faculty, and staff next Saturday to conclude the entire outreach series. They will present on the separate structures, electrical, and payload components in their rovers. I was in the group helping out with the presentations and I am happy to say that student groups finished their presentations successfully. It was awesome to see that the students retained what they learned and made powerpoint slides that summarized what they learned in our outreach events.

As for our team, we are continuing to finish and complete our prototype at the Wilson Center while others are working on the TEDP report (it outlines and details our entire project and we need to submit this to NASA). Personally for me, I have been actively working on my portion of the TEDP report, which are the scissor structure and the release overview sections under the payload section. Everybody is going to be very busy with work during these last few weeks of the semester, so we will be putting extra effort into everything we do.

Andrew Lee
Payload and Structures Team Member

Second Outreach Event and Updates on XSAS

Hi and welcome back to the XSAS blog!

We just held our second outreach event last weekend and it was hosted by the structures team. We wanted to teach the students about the importance of structures in engineering and how they could apply these concepts in building their own rover. They also had a fun activity where they could build and modify their own paper gliders to see how they could fly the best.

The students were split up into teams and with the help of XSAS team members, came up with structural designs for their rover. They had to figure out a way to protect and attach a camera to the rover chassis, as well as mount some batteries and a radio transceiver. The teams drew out their plans and held miniature design reviews and then were given the 'OK' to collect materials and start building! They had to creatively use the materials supplied (plastic bags, cardboard, balsa wood, paper cups, tape, and glue).

As for XSAS, we have done some significant building ourselves. All of the parts for our first prototype are nearly finished and we are beginning assembly. We have also begun testing of the NiChrome/Dyneema burn system that we will use to release XSAS during microgravity testing.

Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more updates on XSAS and our outreach program!

Andrew Chou
Structures and Payload Team Member

First Outreach Workshop Pictures

Our first outreach event was a huge success! See post below for a description of the event. Here are some more pictures:

Student participation at the beginning of our workshop. In this photo, our undergraduate engineering students are collaborating with the middle school participants to help design their egg-drop systems. The goal was to design a structure to protect an egg from a 2nd or 3rd floor drop test. Middle school students were divided into 5 different 4-member groups.

Students presenting their designs to the group

Group names and slogans for the egg-drop

 

Fabricating the hardware

Testing from the 2nd floor

The egg didn't break!

Another team succeeds!

Josh and I also tried

Success!

Dropping eggs from the 3rd floor

With the help of the XSAS team members, all 5 student teams designed great systems to protect an egg from a 2nd and 3rd floor drop. Not a single egg broke all day (even though we had towels prepared just in case). Stay tuned for more pictures and updates from our next Outreach event on March 20th.

Thanks,

Patrick

'Build your own Rover'

Hi everyone and welcome back! This is the first XSAS blog after spring break. After the fun times we all had during our break, it was time to get back to working on XSAS.

The CDR was an important milestone and gave the team some important feedback. It is now time to work in high gear as the semester has just over a month left and flight week is just over 3 months away.

Taking into account the CDR feedback, this week’s schedule was quite busy. A resistor or Nichrome is going to be used to burn the wire in the release mechanism. This requires extensive testing in terms of the burn time, nichrome grades and resitance values. Also other options available instead of dyneema need to be looked into because dyneema is very strong but it also has a high melting point. These tests are to begin early in the week. Another important thing to be done was to finish the machining of the XSAS prototype and assemble it by next week so that ground testing may be able to begin.

But the most exciting event that happened this week was the beginning of the 6-week long ‘Build your own Rover program’ as part of XSAS outreach activities. The program which is being participated by 5^th, 6^th and 7 graders from various schools in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti kicked-off with an introduction workshop on 13^th March. In this workshop, the students were first shown a microgravity video of the team who tested their project last year. The video got them all excited about the workshop and the activities they will be doing. After that, a few team building activities were organized which would help the kids to get to know each other. It was then time to actually build something! The kids had to build an ‘egg-drop mechanism’; they would toss an egg from the 2^nd and 3^rd floor of the FXB building without breaking it. There was some standard material which was given to all the teams and they had to choose from some other things which would enable them to build a better mechanism. In this activity, the students got a chance to display their creativity and also their presentation skills because they had to present their designs to everyone. Many innovative designs were seen and it was fortunate that none of the eggs broke thus avoiding messing up the building! Overall the event was a lot of fun for everyone and the kids also learnt a lot and were all looking forward to the forthcoming weeks when they would build their own rover.    

Thanks and keep reading.

Manan Thakkar

XSAS Payload Team

Pictures from our Critical Design Review

Enjoy :)

 

 XSAS Team

CDR Reviewers

Jeff presents our latching mechanism

Vivek presenting the CDH operations diagram

 

 Daniel presents a CDH hardware diagram

  

 Clark presenting structural analysis

  

Andrew C. presenting release mechanism sequence of operations

 

Mike presenting A/C mounted structure construction schedule

Andrew L. presenting Deployed XSAS Configuration

Team photo

Thanks,
Patrick

XSAS Critical Design Review

Hi, welcome back to XSAS blog!

We just completed our Critical Design Review on February 25, 2010. Let me tell you more about the Critical Design Review (CDR).

CDR is an important step in our preparation for the flight test in Houston this coming up Summer. In CDR, we presented our finalized design for XSAS. Each member of XSAS presented their work in front of faculty member, excom member, and other S3FL students (undergraduate and graduate). Through the presentation, we get critics and inputs to improve our design. After we have the final design of XSAS, we are now ordering components for building XSAS and hoping that the components will get here after Spring Break (after March 7).

We also get a good news about outreach. We get lots of middle school students signed up for the outreach program. We have also ordered the parts for the outreach program.

There's nothing much more I can tell you since we are now in Spring Break and all members are on break. However, we have more fun story to tell you after the break! We will start building XSAS!!! And we will tell you more about how the outreach program goes..

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for next weeks blog post.

Devina Sanjaya
EPS &CDH member
Outreach member

XSAS Ground Testing Rig and Prototype Fabrication

Welcome back to the XSAS blog!

In this post I will explain my work on the payload/structures team building the ground testing rig for XSAS. I will also talk about the progress we are making on the XSAS prototype, the results of the thermal vac testing, and the rover structure we started building for the outreach program.

Before our microgravity flight we want to test the deployment of XSAS on the ground. The best way to do this is to have it extend horizontally on some kind of moving platform. The platform I designed is supported by ball bearing rollers and has a plate that clamps down on each end of XSAS. I recently machined both bottom plates and assembled the majority of these rolling platforms.

Progress continues on the XSAS prototype. The project's critical design review is this Thursday, and we want to show off the prototype to our faculty and peers. A majority of the parts have been machined and assembly will begin earlier this week.

Results from the thermal vacuum testing are in, and it's all good news. The hinges and scissors structure were tested in a vacuum at 100 degrees Celsius. The scissors structure successfully deployed, and the dyneema burn to release the structure occurred 5 seconds sooner. We concluded that there are no negative effects of thermal expansion on the hinges or scissors structure and that the dyneema likely melted faster due to the high temperature.

The outreach team has also started work on the rovers to be used for the "Build Your Own Rover" workshop series. We played around with our supplies and came up with the basic structure design for the rover chassis. The rovers will be made out of PVC pipes and use servos to control tires for movement and searing. The payload we will likely have the kids build will support a camera for a reconnaissance mission.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for next weeks blog post.

Nathan McKay
Structures/Payload Team
Outreach Team
Systems Team

XSAS Thermal Testing and Prototype Fabrication

Hey XSAS followers, in this entry I'm going to be talking about what we've been up to this week on the Payload subsystem.

We recently completed a test rig of our scissor structure that will be used on XSAS.  Since this is only a test, we didn't use anything fancy, we made the panels out of polycarbonate and mounted the setup to a scrap aluminum plate.  This rig allows us to study the deployment of our scissor.  We wrap a line of dyneema around the scissor to compress it, which is shown below:

To deploy the scissor, we stuck a resistor on the wire and ran current through it to heat it up.  This melts the wire and allows the structure to open up.  We end up with the deployed configuration shown below:

We're currently in the process of running this test in an oven at 100°C to see if thermal expansion affects the deployment (i.e. if the hinges get stuck).

We also started fabrication of the XSAS microgravity prototype this week.  So far we've completed the panels, which are identical to the ones seen in the pictures above in the test rig, and we should be done with the scissor pieces very soon (also similar to what is shown above). 

We have a long way to go with fabrication, but we should have completed something that looks like this by the end of this month:

 

  

 That's what's new this week for XSAS!

Joshua Robinson

XSAS Payload Team Lead

Electrical and Power Systems & Command and Data Handling

In this post, I'll be explaining what's going on in the electrical and power systems & command and data handling subsystem (EPS&CDH).

The EPS&CDH subsystem is in charge of wiring, power, and data collection for XSAS.  In essence, anything that uses electricity. 

In our last post, Clark talked about using PCB boards as placeholders for the solar panels on the experimental XSAS flight.  He also mentioned the use of accelerometers and strain gauges on these boards to monitor how the boards react when XSAS is released.  These strain gauges and accelerometers are going to record all the data measurements to a microSD card.  That’s where we come in.

This week, the members of EPS&CDH have been finalizing the list of components we need on these boards.  Recording data from a sensor like an accelerometer or a strain gauge is a process that requires many parts.  In addition, we’re trying to save as much space as possible, so some of these parts are really small.  The accelerometers we’re planning on using are 4mm x 4mm in size!

Stay tuned for a new blog post next week!

Arun Dutta

EPS&CDH Team Member

Structure and Payload

Hi there, and welcome back to the XSAS blog.  In this post, I'll be explaining what's going on in the structure and payload subsystems as well as shedding some light on the overall progress of the project over the past week.

First of all, you should know what the payload and structure refer to. The payload of XSAS is, well, the extendable solar array system.  It's all of the mechanical parts of XSAS that will deploy, including the scissor structure, locking bolts, and frame.

The structure on the other hand refers to the larger, approximately 40 inch x 20 inch x 20 inch frame that will hold XSAS in the aircraft while we fly.  Because we don't know how exactly a satellite carrying XSAS would be released in space, we also need the structure to be able to spin XSAS about an axis before releasing it.  We want to simulate the worst case scenario of deployment, and ensure that our system will survive.

This week, I worked on a trade study of printed circuit boards, or PCB's.  PCB's will be used in the experimental XSAS flight instead of solar panels.  Each board will be outfitted with stress and strain gauges to measure the forces during flight.

Others in the structure and payload team worked on designing a way to test parts of XSAS in a vacuum chamber, as well as ordering parts to start building prototypes. Team members refined the camera mounting design as well as the latching mechanism.

Stay tuned for next week's update :)

Clark Hoffman

Structure and Payload Team Member

Welcome to the XSAS Blog

Hello readers!

I would like to say welcome! This blog is dedicated to following the progress of the XSAS Microgravity Team at the University of Michigan. The team is continuing design work and prototyping on the current XSAS model. We have been working very hard to optimize the design of XSAS and now we are starting our prototyping phase. Last semester we submitted our proposal to NASA's Microgravity Flight Program. Our proposal was selected in December with a flight date in mid June. As the first blog, listed below is some questions you may have about XSAS. Please check out our website for more information about XSAS, http://sites.google.com/site/xsasmicrogravity/.   Also this blog will be updated weekly by a team member about the progress of their subsystem and the over all team, so keep posted!

Happy reading!

   Rachel Trabert

   Chief Engineer

What is XSAS? 

XSAS is the eXtentable Solar Array System. It is a modular package that can be integrated on any standard CubeSat configuration. The system compacted into a 15 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm box and when deployed can reach up to 6 feet long.

What does it do? 

As the name implies, XSAS is a deployable solar array that will help to power CubeSats. The predicted amount of power that XSAS will generate from its 16 solar panels shatters current CubeSat capabilities. Most CubeSats provide power in the range of 4-5 Watts, XSAS can provide an average power of 28 Watts. That's nearly 700% increase in power!

Why microgravity testing?

Microgravity allows all 6 degrees of freedom that XSAS will experience on an actual space mission. By testing in this environment, we should be able to come up with an accurate model for how XSAS will react as it deploys in space.

Who is working on XSAS now?

A group of undergraduate students through UM's Student Space Systems Fabrication Laboratory (S3FL). This team is dedicated to developing XSAS to be tested in microgravity. The XSAS principle investigators are Andrew Klesh and Patrick Senatore.