Fish Coming From Space

SpaceFish breaking news.

We have kept this site without update for a long time… this is not so good, because now we have to summarize all the news in a single post .

First of all, we want to announce that our project has been delayed. We are doing well in our schedule, but unfortunately many extra tests have to be done to perform a perfect flight in Kiruna and resolving all kind of safety issues, as well the SpaceFish ship has been redesigned too.

The new SpaceFish model

The new SpaceFish is larger and can achieve more stability at high velocities, we are not going to use any kind of motor in Kiruna, it will be a pure glider version without air in-takes.

Now we have to build new molds, we selected one company from Poland. Kamil is ready in Warsaw to supervise this job.

Kamil supervising some aircraft molds during his studentship this summer.

We presented this issues to the experts board at the end of July at DLR, they were very comprehensive and let us the opportunity of keep working with the next RexusBexus experiment in 2010, under the condition of keep the good job under a strict (and now realistic) schedule.

Now focusing inside the SpaceFish project, the first flying autopilot candidate did his first test-field outside the laboratory successfully! We tested it on board of a “little” minesweeper. This ship is part of a Fernando’s project and David and Héctor wanted to help him taking all kind of telemetry with the autopilot. We applied all the ideas that we presented to the experts the last July and we got an amazing results, with stable measures (less than 1º without any kind of filter! we are really waiting to see what will do our Kalman filter!), a noiseless radio-link, a really cool software in the ground station (we will do a specific new for this chapter), a mechanical robust design and also a good behavior with different temperatures.

Héctor and David with the telemetry system

Here there is a video of the “minesweeper” maneuvers.

The next step is taking the autopilot to a real glider and start to take inputs and outputs to do models and other control stuff in the next days.

SpaceFish autopilot, first candidate

After checking all our software and hardware in the first autopilot with our little Cessna, we finished the first autopilot autopilot for the SpaceFish.

This new autopilot generation weights 250gr. and its dimensions are 70×70x90mm and it is suitable to be enclosed in the final design of the electronic box for testing. This new version  is more powerful, it counts with two microprocessors instead one, working in parallel. They provide an extra-security as well more processor capacity as we need more computational requirements from our attitude estimator and navigation system. Also it has new sensors, like the three axis wind-speed.

SpaceFish Autopilot

Now we want to present to you our new toy to test the autopilot in ground. It is like a stewart platform, providing us three degrees of freedom with feedback.

Three degress of freedom testing platform

Safety and parachute deployment system

Between test and test, today we want to show you how works our safety system.
In the next video you can see the analog circuit controlling the servo which locks the parachute deployment system. It is constantly checking three signals, one if the free-fall circuit triggers, another if we leave the flight footprint and the last in case of failure in one of the micro-controllers. The system also it is protected against itself, and in case of failure or loose of power, the servo triggers anyway unlocking the parachute.

And here, a system emulating the upper hatch of the SpaceFish that we showed in a previous new. The afternoon testing of the parachute deployment system was successful.

And more news about the SF1, it is suffering some modifications to take-off from a runway, we decided finally to add it a landing gear for testing here in ground. It is taking us a lot of time and resources to be on time and do the first successful flight of the SF1, but yes, we can!

Magnífico !

Autopilot testing

Here it is one video of our autopilot testings. It includes a attitude estimator, 3x accelerometers, 3x gyroscopes, 3x magnetic vectors, 3x wind-speed, 1x barometer, 1x temperature, 1x voltage supply, GPS with longitude, latitude, 3x ground-speed, and time. The RadioLink is 2.4GHz @ 19.2kbps with a sampler frequency of 50Hz.

As just we finished all the ground station software, we are just gathering all the widgets like this artificial horizon shown in the previous video. The final ground station will include a 3DGoogleEarth map, a compass, a flight plan… all kind of widgets to do easier the following of the SpaceFish from ground.

The screen that you can see at the left side is the Status Panel, where we can check all the calculations of the micro-controllers on board.

Status Panel of the Autopilot

Testing the parachute, revisited.

We don’t want to destroy the SF0, so we thought of making a testing platform for the parachute deployment system. It has the same dimensions as the space available in the SF1 for the parachute, we can now test our free-fall sensor, springs… everything that in case something is wrong in Kiruna during the flight, to be sure that the parachute will be deployed successfully.

Testing platform for the parachute.

As the previous tests, we will do them from the roof of our building, using the PVC gray rails in the photo to launch the “missile” with the parachute in it.

Héctor and Santiago making the testing platform

The Space-Fish crew will attend the 19th ESA Symposium on European Rocket and Balloon Programmes and Related Research

During the next week, Héctor will represent the Space-Fish project during the next ESA Symposium on European Rocket and Ballon Programmes and Related Research. This will be the first official presentation of the Space-Fish to the scientific comunity.

Héctor will show to the audience the main targets of the project and its status next Monday at 16:45.

More details about the Symposium can be found here http://www.spaceflight.esa.int/pac-symposium2009/ .

The Space-Fish crew

Autopilot prototype

Hello again,

today we want to show you our first prototype, don’t let your eyes betray you! It includes 3 gyros, 3 accelerometers, radio-link with a range of 10 miles, temperature sensor and GPS!

This version only has one microprocessor, it is our workbench to study mechanical vibrations, radio interferences, interface with the aircraft motor and actuators, power consumption etc, and of course, for logging all our flights!

Also we tested it under -18ºC, with LiPo batteries, without any thermal protection, and at this moment, it works fine under this conditions.

Autopilot testing prototype

Fernando is dealing with his exams this month, the next week he will be back! and we will start to present prettier all our data flights. I hope we can show you soon videos and data from our flights.

SF0 evolves to…. the new SF1!

The SF0 (the mock-up) mechanical design is almost ready. The landing gear, the ducted fan, the motor and the rails into the fuselage for the electronics are ready to be mounted altogether during this weekend.

But we don’t stop here, the SF1 is already built, with only a 1.9Kg of mass! It will be a copy of the SF0 but ready to fly. We hope to be ready to flight it during the next two or three weeks. The next model, the SF2, is under construction, it will be built lighter (1.2Kg expected) with some ribs to add the parachute deployment system. The SF2 model will be without landing gear, ready to experiment with our balloon, and it will be the first candidate for fly in the BEXUS campaign.

The SpaceFish team with the new SF1

We will have the tests videos ready soon, we had a busy week testing and validating all our electronics and software successfully. And we are so proud of announce that our 3D cockpit is nearly complete.

Also, we want to present you our testing jet, it shares the same electric motor and ducted fan with the SF1. It is an alpha-jet with enough space for our electronics inside the cockpit.

SpaceFIsh Testing Jet

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Preparing the flying model

So, here we are again. This time preparing the flying model of the SpaceFish for the first flight!

Kamil joined us this week, he is working on the parachute deployment system and also on the placement of all the parts inside the SpaceFish. We hope to show you interesting videos during the next week, this Friday we will test all the stuff in a real flight mission, stay tuned!

Héctor and Kamil with the SpaceFish

Parachute Tests

Being friday afternoon we wanted to do something a bit more exciting. Unfortunately, a SpaceChair didn’t happen. However, we prepared a 2Kg little box and took some videos. In the first movie the box is dropped by a worker from a new building in our University. In the rest of them, we found an interesting place to do it ourselves, the emergency stairs of our building.

Here is also a picture of Santiago holding the parachute before the experiments:

— fpereda