Spaceshot

My third and final technical team experience with Illinois Space Society (ISS) was with the in-house team called Spaceshot. The goal of the team was to develop a rocket to reach the edge of space, also called the Kármán line, 100 kilometers above sea level. This is quite the feat—Spaceshot was planned to be a multiyear project from the jump. I joined when the team was first founded, so I got to help with an early prototype named Endurance. This was a precursor rocket to the teams first official one, you can read more about the history of the design on the current Spaceshot web page.

One cool thing about Endurance were these roll control flaps that we wanted to try out. I believe the idea was to try this in the earliest iteration as the team thought they would need them for the final rocket that reaches space. Essentially how they work is by extending or retracting via a rack-and-pinion mechanism according to an active control algorithm, mostly using sensor feedback from an onboard IMU. I mainly helped with these flaps, mostly with manufacturing and assembly. A fun memory I have of this time was spinning in an office chair with the flaps assembly to test if we had them sensing rotational velocity and correctly extending or retracting.

It was quite enjoyable furthering skills and working on a project with so many people. The underclassmen I worked with always made me smile with the amount of knowhow and enthusiasm they brought. We got to successfully launch Endurance at the end of the semester, which is always a rewarding sight to see.