Release Spine Test

Another productive Integration Week day is coming to a close for the Suaineadh team, todays work was primarily focused on obtaining measurements from the Inertial Measurment Units with the FPGA board and work on the CPU board. New brackets were also designed which will be mounted in CHAD for a vibration test possibly tomorrow.

A first test of the daughter release mechanism with the spring-pyro cutter assembly was carried out as well (see video below). Everything worked exceptionally well at this test.

Let the work begin ...

At 8am on Sunday morning, Adam and Jerker arrived at Edinburgh airport for the Integration Week in Glasgow. Malcolm, Johannes and Thomas picked them up to give the two from KTH a tour around Edinburgh and the Fringe festival afterwards. After arriving in Glasgow, Jerker and Adam moved into their hostel and the work on Suaineadh started in the afternoon with a meeting where the schedule of the following week was discussed. The evening was spent in the city centre of Glasgow after strolling through the movie set of Brad Pitt's new movie 'World War Z' which is shot in Glasgow at the moment.

Today began early when Thomas picked up Jerker and Adam from the hostel to show them their way to the University of Glasgow. The whole morning was then spend to figure out the best set-up to arrange the different electronic components in CHAD (Central Hub And Daughters). After this was established, Adam and Jerker where working on assembling the electronics for a first functionality test while Malcolm, Johannes and Thomas where dealing with the issue on how to mount the electronic components inside CHAD. At the end of the day we even managed it to take a picture with one of the cameras :). For tomorrow, it is planned to manufacture the cables between the different subsystems and fabricate the brackets to mount the components inside CHAD.

Integration Week and IPR coming up next week

Adam and Jerker are preparing to fly over from Stockholm to Glasgow tomorrow morning at 7am for Suaineadh's Integration Week and Interim Progress Review (IPR) which will take place the entire next week. During the Integration Week at the University of Glasgow and University of Strathclyde the Suaineadh team will integrate most of the electronic components in the mechanical structure to test their fitting and functionality. Adam and Jerker will be supported by Malcolm, Andrew, John, Johannes and Thomas from the UK site of the experiment. The Interim Progress Review where two experts from DLR, SSNB and ESA are coming to have a look at the progress of our experiment will happen on Friday the 2nd of September. This blog will be updated almost daily for the next couple of days with stories and pictures of the Integration Week. Let the work begin...

Electronic components getting built and validated

The Suaineadh team members at KTH in Stockholm are working hard to build and validate the electronic components in order to ship them to Glasgow before the Interim Progress Review (IPR) on the 2nd of September in Glasgow. The integration of the electronics in the structure will happen one week before the IPR in the so called Integration Week. The fabrication of the Power Distribution Board (PDB) has been finished today, first test show that the PBP works well. PDB on both pictures; left for CHAD (Central Hub And Daughter sections), right for DSM (Data Storage Module)

The work on Suaineadh is progressing as scheduled, the manufacturing of CHAD is almost complete and also the electronics are shipped out from Stockholm to Glasgow. Fredrik Rogberg from KTH spend the last month at the University of Glasgow designing the antennas for the wireless connection between CHAD and the REXUS rocket. Last Friday Fredrik gave a compehensive presentation on the antenna design at the University of Strathclyde.

Suaineadh passed their CDR

The Suaineadh team is at the DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen at the moment for the Critical Design Review (CDR). Malcolm, Adam, Jerker and Thomas arrived in Munich on Monday morning at lovely sunny weather. The Suaineadh spend the whole afternoon and evening to prepare for the Suaineadh’s CDR presentation the next day. On Wednesday at 10:45am we had our presentation and it went quite well. Our team received a lot of good comments on the SED and experiment design. Just a few minor improvements were suggested for Suaineadh at the CDR. In the afternoon all REXUS 12 teams had a discussion about interfaces and possible interferences between the different experiments. At the REXUS CDR dinner in the evening, the Suaineadh team won the 3^rd place in the REXUS User Manual Pub Quiz, woohoo J. We all got GSOC(ks) as a price. This morning we had some more presentation on pre- and post-delivery testing and an ask-the-expert session. At the moment the whole team is sitting together to discuss some of the minor issues that came up during the CDR which still need to be solved.

Suaineadh at the Science Festival in Glasgow

Just to report on the huge success of the Suaineadh experiment on this years Glasgow Science Festival. Andrew, John and Malcolm were on hand to display the experiment, including the prototype of CHAD and the Magic Hat ejection barrel which looked pretty impressive!! It was a long but fun day of talking to lots of people who seemed genuinely fascinated (even including the kids) with the work we are doing and all are looking forward to hearing of the success of the mission on BBC News next March!!!! We would just like to thank Debbie from the Science Festival for inviting us to show our work and also to everybody who came to see our display!!!