1. Electrical Engineering, Wentworth Institute of Technology
Rocket Fuselage Return-landing System with Environmental and Situational Compensation
James Auisello, Hyungi Lee, David Regan
Advisor: Joseph Santacroce
Electrical Engineering, Wentworth Institute of Technology
ABSTRACT
Modern rocket systems use several different forms of active stabilization in an attempt to control trajectory and flight path. The issue with the methods currently being used is that they tend to work best, if at all, at high velocities, and also tend to cost a significant amount of money to develop and test. Apart from the cost of rocket research and development is the cost of the actual flight, and the cost of the retrieval and reconditioning of components to be reused in future flights. According to SpaceX, a Falcon 9 launch costs about $60 million to build and $200,000 to fuel. With such a high price of materials it becomes clear that the recovery and reuse of a complete rocket system could significantly lower the cost of space exploration. Rocket systems currently being developed for space exploration have made great headway in the development of rocket landing systems and companies like SpaceX are close to being able to consistently land a reusable rocket. It is the goal of the project to scale down those developments to try and apply them to model rocketry. Successfully implementing active landing systems to model rockets could contribute to developments in full scale rockets but with much lower costs.
The project team propose to use gyroscopic sensors and servo motors to create a gimbaled thrust vector control for the rockets main engine, allowing for the rocket to fly straight regardless of wind conditions that could cause an undesirable flight path. In addition to limiting lateral drift with the gimbaled thrust control we intend to develop a safe and reliable method of landing the model rockets with the use of GPS and other onboard sensor systems that will account for wind, temperature, and other outside disturbances. The system will be contain various sensors to use real time data for accurate guiding and flight path correction that will be provided by the rocket, or landing system that is devised.