Selection of Fly Your Thesis! 2021 teams announced
Three teams have been chosen by a panel of experts to participate in an ESA Academy parabolic flight campaign in 2021. With only a few months to prepare the experiments, teams from University of Cranfield, Glasgow, Imperial College, London, Delft University and Carlos III in Madrid will have to hit the ground running in the new year before taking to the skies a few months later for their weightless flight.
Earlier in 2020 the teams responded to a call released by ESA Academy on the Fly Your Thesis! website asking for experiment proposals to be submitted by October. While many applications were received, the panel of experts whittled the choice down to eight potential teams and experiments that looked promising. These shortlisted teams were then asked to submit a first version of a technical document for Novespace as well as present their project to the panel of experts. Like many other meetings that occurred throughout 2020, this assessment was also conducted virtually which was an added complication for the students who had to rehearse their timing and delivery from separate locations.
After deliberation, the panel selected three teams to participate in the educational programme. Team DZH Dynamics is a team who applied for the second time. The team initially proposed their experiment for Fly Your Thesis! 2020 but with too many uncertainties about the concept and safety concerns, the team were given feedback on how to improve their proposal should they wish to resubmit. Roll forward one year and the team submitted a proposal that addressed all the concerns of the panel the year before, thus opening up the doors for the students to enter the programme in 2021. DZH Dynamics is composed of 3 master and 3 PhD students from University Carlos III of Madrid, Imperial College and TU Delft who will investigate and capitalize on the Dzhanibekov effect in an attempt to control and save energy in attitude maneuvers of a rotating and shape changing or ‘morphing’ satellite.
ZEUS is a team of 4 PhD students from Glasgow University who will investigate the control algorithms required to detumble femto satellites, so called chipsats, in microgravity with the use of magnetorquers actuating in a well-controlled magnetic environment. The team will be challenged by the miniaturization of the satellite technology and the short period of time before which these free-floating units will impinge on their experimental setup due to g-jitters.
LEOniDAS is a team from Cranfield University who are wanting to test the deployment of so-called drag sails, large surface area sails that are deployed at the end of the operational life of Low Earth satellites to aid in speeding up the process of orbit decay through increased atmospheric drag. The team intend to test new deployment mechanisms in microgravity as well as the effect of deployment on the host satellite’s attitude during and after deployment.
At the end of January 2021, the teams will attend a virtual training workshop where they will be taught about systems engineering, project and team management, communication and outreach skills and spend several hours with the expert engineers from Novespace. This will be done alongside other teams participating in other Your Thesis! programmes and should kick start their projects in the right direction.
