Senior Design/Engineering Capstone Project-Terminal Velocity

Reconstructing the Atmosphere:
A High Velocity Atmospheric Descent Probe

University of Idaho

	This is a cartoon strip that conceptually displays the different steps of our experiment: 1. The probe will be launched on a sounding rocket to approximately 500km. 2. The rocket will release the probe at a specified point on the rocket's trajectory. 3. The probe will fall through the atmoshphere, communicating via radar transponder with a ground station. 4. The probe will impact with the ocean. It will not be retrieved. 5. After the experiment there will be minimal impact on the environment, and our task will be to reconstruct the atmosphere using the data collected.

exploded iso view of probe

This is an exploded image of how we currently expect to manufacture and assemble our probe.
Our probe will include mechanical switches, batteries and a battery box, a C-band
radar transponder with a fish-eye antenna, and a grounding plane for the antenna that will
also act as a heat sink for the radar transponder.

mass model

This is an image of the model.
The probe is laying with the top on the left and bottom on the right.
The mass model has a pvc bottom and top, battery boxes, switches, and a short range
transmitter for detecting when the probe has been switched on.
The switches are accurate summing model of what will actually be in the final product

flight model

This is a picture of the final flight model.

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Comments or questions concerning this page? Please contact: [ lane1939@vandals.uidaho.edu ]
Last Edited: May 11, 2007

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