In this second part of our 2 part series on the engine bay, we’ll be talking about all of the systems that can be found in the engine bay. All of the systems that control the engine are inside here, so there is a lot to see. In the very middle of the engine bay…
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The launch is getting near, and almost everybody has arrived at the launch site in Spain. Some of the team have been at the launch site for over a week now, and we are making serious progress. The final assembly of the rocket started today, in order to be ready for the dress rehearsal tomorrow.…
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The engine bay is one of the most critical components, though it is quickly overlooked. In this series of 2 blogposts we’ll be taking a look at how it works and what’s inside. In this first part we’ll look at what makes up the engine bay, while in the second part some of the most…
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Project Stratos began as a way for students to break boundaries and eventually reach space. This July Stratos III will launch from Spain, having as a main objective to break the European amateur rocketry altitude record. Breaking this altitude record means that DARE will be a step closer to reaching space with a rocket designed…
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The exhaust stream of a rocket engine is an incredibly extreme environment. At velocities several times the speed of sound, temperatures in excess of 2000 °C in a gas stream loaded with small abrasive aluminium oxide particles, this is a severely hostile environment for any commonly used aerospace material. For this reason, in the past…
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On the 26th of May 2018, the second dress rehearsal of Stratos III took place. Dress rehearsals are intended to simulate the actual launch of the rocket as closely as possible without actually launching anything. To this end, the rocket was assembled and placed on the launch tower for the first time and the team…
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A year and a half worth of work will finally be shown on the 16th of July.  Our very own Stratos III will be launched this summer at INTA, Spain. With launch fast approaching, the teams are working hard to meet all the deadlines. The propulsion team have been hard at work testing out their…
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Having a working video stream from the rocket involved quite some small tests and calculation before we knew how to implement the system software and hardware wise. In the past, we’ve used GoPro’s as cameras in the rocket, which turned out to be a nightmare control-wise. This year, we are using four RunCams (a different…
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From the top-level diagram of the engine control unit (ECU) last time, you could see that the ECU actuates a servo, a (brushless) DC motor, reads out sensors and is a big intersection of power and signal lines. In designing the engine control unit, we first had to check the highest system voltage level in…
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In order to make our rocket, we don’t just need to design and make our components, we also need to test them. TNO is an independent research organization in the Netherlands, stimulating technology and innovation across a wide range of fields. They have offered us a place near the TU Delft where we can test…
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