image: In a presentation for donors, the team showcased their design, which is comparable to the size of a football.
Credit: HEDGE/UVA Engineering image
UVA Engineering mechanical and aerospace students plan to hitch a ride on a NASA rocket this August. They want to see if they can be the first researchers to use low-cost, miniature spacecraft technology to acquire reentry data that could improve future full-scale hypersonic aircraft designs.
The fourth-year undergraduate students, part of a capstone design course that prepares students for engineering careers, have dubbed their foot-long craft HEDGE, for Hypersonic ReEntry Deployable Glider Experiment.
The cost savings, if the students prove their concept, could be in the multiple millions of dollars per test flight.
“The cost savings, if the students prove their concept, could be in the multiple millions of dollars per test flight,” said Christopher Goyne, the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering professor who leads the capstone design course and directs the UVA Aerospace Research Laboratory.
Goyne has performed hypersonics research for NASA, the Department of Defense and industry.
“Currently, hypersonic researchers are limited to either complex computer simulations or expensive flight and wind tunnel testing,” he added.
Taking Their Best Shot
The UVA capstone student engineers will have one shot to test their design.
NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore has opened space to engineering students on its RockSat-X. Each deck of the relatively small rocket can hold an experiment weighing 30 pounds or lighter. HEDGE, if it passes all of its preflight checks, will be one of the projects nestled inside.
The rocket blasts about 100 miles high, reaching the altitude of some spacecraft, then falls back to Earth, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean for reuse.
To successfully complete its mission, HEDGE must eject from the rocket within a second, and must deploy its stabilizing fins — shorter than wings, with one on each side of the fuselage — and achieve aerodynamic stability within 10 seconds.
The idea is to capitalize on the rocket’s altitude and use gravity to achieve hypersonic flight speeds.
“We sometimes think of gliders as slow, but in this case, it will be anything but,” said fourth-year aerospace engineering student Luke Dropulic, one of the 13 ambitious fourth-year students on the capstone project and a previous NASA intern.
A tiny research satellite called a CubeSat, which is commonly used by academic researchers, will form the core of the HEDGE glider. The onboard satellite will never deploy into orbit. Instead, it will remain in the glider, flying into the Earth’s atmosphere, to transmit its proof-of-concept data.
Following the glider’s separation from the rocket, the CubeSat must connect via radio signal with an existing low-Earth orbit satellite, transmitting temperature, pressure and position readings every half second until its separate splash down, a little over 5.5 minutes later.
Students Collaborate in Their Different Roles
The design evolved from previous capstone students’ research, with upgraded considerations for the RockSat-X ride.
On the project, the students separated into teams as they might in the professional world for an actual aerospace employer: “HEDGE has many complex parts that make it possible, and all of those parts are represented by students exhibiting their subject matter expertise,” noted fourth-year aerospace engineering student Sydney Bakir, the program manager and a current Department of Defense Naval Surface Warfare Center intern.
Specifically, she said, the labor has been divided among structures and integration (Franklin Escobar, Cade Shaw, Zachary Morris); software and avionics (Caleb White, Cole Bixby, Jason Morefield); power, thermal and environment (Arooj Nasir, Nathan Kaczka); attitude, stability and trajectory (Benjamin Petsopoulos, Michael Wennemer); and communications (Max Cristinzio, Jason Morefield) groups.
The team will have to demonstrate to NASA the precision and durability of its hardware and software sub-systems that will be collecting the re-entry data in order to receive final approval for launch.
Dropulic, the deputy project manager, said, “the successful communication of data from space to UVA will prove the experiment worked.”
He noted that forces acting on a small-scale hypersonic aircraft can be extrapolated to a larger design, and in theory, should be more reliable than computer simulations or Earth-bound physical tests.”
Partnering With Generous Donors
Bakir and Dropulic said the team, under the guidance of Goyne, with assistance from lecturer Michael McPherson, would not be headed to space without the generosity they’ve received.
Goyne agreed. “The support from our stakeholders has been wonderful, and it serves as recognition of the tenacity and expertise of our students as they undertake a complex aerospace engineering problem,” Goyne said.
He noted that, if successful, UVA will open the door to a new era of academic research in which more universities can solve likely problems hypersonic flights will encounter.
We are honored to support this exciting endeavor that combines important national security issues with educational opportunity for UVA’s best and brightest young engineers.
- John Friend, Systems Planning & Analysis
Systems Planning & Analysis, an Alexandria-based national security company, is providing financial support for the project, which this year includes $40,000 for the ride on RockSat-X, as well as the cost of parts and machining.
SPA is one of UVA Engineering’s original 40Core industry partners. The industry engagement program offers its partners UVA engineering talent, from ideas to full solutions.
“We are honored to support this exciting endeavor that combines important national security issues with educational opportunity for UVA’s best and brightest young engineers,” said John Friend, senior technical adviser for the company. “We wish them all the best in August.”
Other HEDGE donors include the Jefferson Trust, which awarded the team $10,000 in flash funding (separate from the Jefferson Trust’s larger annual award cycle), and UVA Engineering/the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.