Project Athos (2022)

Athos 10K SRAD (Hybrid)

Project Athos will be the team’s first ever fully SRAD rocket, powered by our new SRAD engine, Maelstrom. The development of this engine started three years ago, with a successful hot-fire test being carried out by the end of our first year. Since then, the team has been busy securing a permanent test site location, and using the results gathered during the hot-fire to improve engine performance. This is a new frontier for the team, and we are excited to showcase the expertise that has been gathered over the last 6 years on a fully student developed rocket.

The rocket body will be manufactured using the team’s in-house composite manufacturing method, Vacuum Assisted Resin Infusion (VARI). The three body tubes, nose cone, fins, and couplers will be made from either CFRP or GFRP using this method. The bottom half of the airframe will house the hybrid SRAD engine, composed mainly of a combustion chamber and oxidizer-tank. The other half will contain the recovery harness and the avionics bay.

Recovery events will be triggered using the team’s first CO2 ejection system, which will deploy a drogue and subsequent main parachute. Each separation event will be redundantly triggered via off the shelf and SRAD avionics packages contained within the avionics bay. The bay will also be responsible for collecting various flight information such as temperature, pressure and GPS coordinates to be transmitted to the ground station.

Lastly, the payload project consists of an automated prototype for the measurement of cellular reactive oxidative species.

Result

Spaceport America Cup 2022

10K Hybrid SRAD Runner Up