Today an article about the upcoming Stratos launch anniversary celebration came out in the Delta.

The article features information about the rocket itself, as well as the lecture that will be given tonight by Stratos II project leader Frank Engelen, as part of the celebration.

You can read the article here.

And of course you can also come to the lecture tonight at 20:00 in lecture room A of the Electronics Engineering (EWI) faculty, at Mekelweg 4 in Delft. Everyone is welcome!

Today Bart Hertog, a member of the Stratos electronics team, graduated on a Stratos-inspired project: Incremental Non-Linear Dynamic Inversion Control of a Sounding Rocket. His project was inspired by the successful launch of the Stratos I rocket, and based on the active control canard system designed by the 2009 Stratos DSE (Design Synthesis Exercise–bachelor graduation project) group. The objective was to verify wheter an active control algorithm would significanlty improve the performance of a Stratos II-type sounding rocket and hence increase its apogee altitude.

Bryan, Hein, Frank

Recently, three graduating members of the Stratos team were assigned to the graduation room 9.03 of the Aerospace Engineering faculty. All three are graduating on Stratos-related projects, so this will allow them to devote more time to the project and therefore speed it up.

Bryan is graduating on “Real-time attitude and position determination system of the Stratos II sounding rocket” under supervisors Dr. Ir. Erwin Mooij and Dr. Ir. Chris Verhoeven. He is also sitting in Steven Engelen’s (prominent DARE Alumni) old graduation spot and absorbing all of the positive cosmic energy that he will redirect into his thesis work.

Next to Bryan is Frank, working on “Quantitative risk analysis of rocket trajectories”, also under the supervision of Dr. Ir. Erwin Mooij and Dr. Ir. Chris Verhoeven, as well as Prof. Ir. B.A.C.Ambrosius.

And on the other side of the room, in the nice “room with a view” spot by the window, is Hein. He is working on “Development of a solid rocket motor for the Stratos II sounding rocket”, under the supervision of Ir. B.T.C.Zandbergen and Dr. Ir. T.J.Dingemans.

In October DARE was contacted by a Dutch national radio show on Radio5. In their item ‘Chain Question’, persons from the scientific community answer questions posed by previous speakers. From our team Frank answered a question on launching rockets from under planes.

Hoe?Zo! kettingvraag ‘Raketje lanceren’

Just before the summer holiday Robin Kearey graduated. Robin is one of the electronics experts and known to be a walking electronics component encyclopaedia and soldering “koning”. We congratulate Robin with his MSc degree in electronics and wish him the best of luck with this new phase of his life. Robin you will be missed.

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Dawn flight engine ready to go

On Thursday the 3th of May 2012, the hybrid propulsion team of the Stratos II project (named Dawn) successfully tested their flight engine. This hybrid rocket engine has been developed based on the research they have done during the whole span of the project. Now finally they are ready to go for the first attempt in the history of DARE to launch a hybrid rocket engine. The team has kept to their original design of an engine with a sorbitol fuel grain and a nitrous oxide oxidizer. To store the oxidizer the tank concept developed during the Spacecraft Engineering Minor [...]