High-Level Project Summary
A solution to the separation of two components in space without the use of pyrotechnics. The system we developed seperates the two components smoothly in space with negligible amount of shock.The system uses 15 watts of electricity.The entire assembly weighs just under 200 grams.The system does not create any sort of space debris.A same solution with better components can withstand a force of 4000 Newtons during the launch and while being seperated.The System can withstand a wide temperature range of -50°C to +100°C thanks to the heaters onboard the motors and electronics assembly.The system is resettable so that it can be tested multiple times before the launch to avoid any failure.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
The project does not use any sorts of explosion or explosive devices to seperate two components in space.
The system consists of a high tension spring, two geared motors, two motor extensions, one ESP8266 wifi module, integrated relay, heaters made from nichrome which are wraped around steel in order to not keep it directly in contact with components.
The goal of the project is to reach a capability where it will create zero shock on the rest of the spacecraft's body and glide out smoothly, and also consuming minimum amount of space by integrating the electronic components to the onboard components of the spacecraft.
Space Agency Data
The data provided by NASA was instrumental while creating the project. It helped to gain a rough idea of how our prototype would look like. It gave us a lot of perspectives in terms of taking care of temperature, force on it while launching the rocket, etc.
The data such as working of the pre existing systems using pyrotechnics which consisted of frangibolts and memory alloys gace us an idea of what all factors should be avoided such as explosion while the operation is taking place.
Hackathon Journey
This being our very first hackathon we were super excited about it, the solution of the project went through various ups and downs with respect to the challenges we didn't thought about while taking up the challenge. Our approach at developing the project was to have a rigorous mindset and solve as many problems as we could onboard. I'd like to thank Mahendra welding works, Maple engineering works and VEER Electronics to provide us the parts we needed. I'd also like to thank my dad to take me to the city on our scooter for a 3 hour drive to gather all the components which are not available in my city.
References
We have used Arduino IDE for coding the Esp8266. Most of the data was collected from the data given by NASA of previous seperation systems.
Tags
#hardware , #seperationsystems , #withoutabang
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.