Back in 2013, one of our engineers here, Luke, was (and still is!) a member of the Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation; and they were getting ready to launch a student designed and built rocket. As the lead mechanical engineer on the development program of the enDAQ sensor (formerly Slam Stick) vibration data logger products, I jumped at the opportunity to include a sensor prototype on the rocket. I saw this as a great chance to not only get some interesting acceleration, pressure and vibration data for Luke's team; but also, to qualify our hardware in a real test flight. Plus, who doesn't like rockets!
Check out the video
Check out the video of the flight that shows the data captured by the sensor prototype.
What happened during the flight
As you saw, the booster motor fired flawlessly, accelerating the vehicle to mach 1.2. After 4 seconds of an 8.3 second booster motor burn, the second stage avionics mistakenly fired the sustainer motor. The sustainer successfully flew for approximately 1.5 seconds, at which point the hot gases broke the sustainer apart. The sustainer reached an apogee of only 9,000ft approximately 12s after liftoff; a 50 second free fall of the sustainer followed.
What we learned
The flight was still a success for the development team because valuable data was captured; the airframe held up strong (proving aerodynamic assumptions); the experimental 90,000 Ns (Newton-Second) booster motor ran perfectly; and exactly what went wrong and how to fix it was quickly identified. I was especially excited about the flight because of how well the sensor prototype performed. It successfully recorded the acceleration and vibration data throughout the flight; and it captured the impact when the rocket hit the ground. It also provided valuable pressure data to Luke's team. Most important of all was that the hardware was perfectly fine afterwards and the tape used (included with each enDAQ sensor unit) kept the device securely mounted throughout the flight!
Stay tuned
The enDAQ sensor that went up as part of this initial launch in 2013 was an earlier prototype; but the Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation will be doing another launch this March of 2016. For this flight there will be a number of sensor units and also two new prototypes. Again, the Mavericks are helping enDAQ, a division of Midé, test out new features/versions of our products! These prototypes have a GPS receiver and analog/external inputs to record high frequency pressure data. Let us know if you think a data logger with these features will be valuable, we think it will! Subscribe to this blog for all the latest rocket updates.
For more on this topic, visit our dedicated Vibration Loggers & Vibration Sensors resource page. There you’ll find more blog posts, case studies, webinars, software, and products focused on your vibration testing and analysis needs.
