LAPLander - a student rocket project "Light Airbag Protected Lander" LAUNCHED! Visit our blog for news on the development! http://kthrocketprobe2010.blogspot.com/ News feed: 30 November Experiment delivery 22 July Critical Design Review 2009-02-23 - 2009-02-28 Preliminary Design Review, Germany 2009-02-10 LAPLander accepted to fly on the REXUS 7/8 Rocket! (launch March 2010) 2009-02-05 The team presented the LAPLander project and design for the ESA jury. Tales and images can be found here! The detailed LAPLander presentation can be found here 2009-02-03 The first fall and impact tests have been made, have a look at the videos.. "impact test" & "fall test" 2009-02-03 Images of the LAPLander prototype are now available online Project Description The objective of the project is to design, build and validate a prototype of a small ejectable sounding rocket payload capable of collecting data in an on-board memory. The LAPLander design concerns the airbraking, impact protection and recovery systems, along with the study of flight characteristics to evaluate the payload performance. The project has been submitted as a proposal for flight on ESA's REXUS 7/8 rocket campaign for student experiments, which have a scheduled launch March 2010. See our public presentation for more info. The main components of the payload include the following: - An airbraking and impact protection system (light green), based on inflatable airbags that serve both to decelerate the payload and to protect it at the moment of impact. - Control unit and sensors (dark green) - 4 Dummy SCALE electric field wire boom units (gray) - A redundant recovery system using both a radio beacon and a satellite commmunication module (Not shown on CAD) The detailed LAPLander proposal for REXUS 7/8 can be found HERE The Team The LAPLander team consists of students from KTH (left to right): Matias Wartelski Christian Westlund Li Xin Malin Gustafsson Joakim Sandström Oliver Neuner and.. (not in the picture above) Erik Sund Patrtik Ahlen Christian Jonsson Johan Juhlen Johan Thelander Mattias Hedberg The team is lead by Torbjörn Sundberg, PhD student at the department of Space and Plasma Physics, and supervised by Dr. Nickolay Ivchenko. Project Documentation SED - Student experiment documentation (CDR version) Project report: Matias Wartelski Project report: Malin Gustafsson Project report: Erik Sund Project report: Christian Jonsson Project report: Johan Thelander REXUS 7/8 The REXUS program is a sounding rocket program for university students and aims to provide practical experience from a real space project. REXUS is a cooperative programme implemented by the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) together with Deutches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) and the European Space Agency (ESA), and financed by the Swedish National Space Board and DLR. The basic idea behind REXUS is to provide an experimental space platform for students. The planned schedule for REXUS 7/8 is the following (upcoming event in red): • 17 Nov 2008 - Deadline for proposals • 19 Dec 2008 – Preliminary selection • 2-6 Feb 2009 - Workshop at DLR Bonn, Germany, resp. ESA-ESTEC in Noordwijk, The Netherlands • 13 Feb 2009 - Announcement of final selection of experiments for REXUS 7/8 • 23-28 Mar 2009 - Student Training Week at Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany • 22 Juny 2009 - Critical Design Review (CDR) • 10 Oct 2009 - Helicopter drop test, Skogstibble skjutfält - Cancelled • Nov 2009 - Delivery of experiments • Mar 2010 - REXUS 7/8 Launch from Esrange Sponsors ESA DLR SNSB A-Mek Autoliv Fola Airsafe LR Tryck NanoSpace Nolato Sunne Ozone Tools Momentum