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