Week 10: Finishing touches
Kira A -
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Moon Bound Mission :). ! As I approach the end of my project, I am spending a lot of my time on my report and presentation so my updates for this blog won’t be nearly as exciting as my last, but I will try my best to keep you all entertained!
3D Printer Trouble
This week, I intended to finish printing all of the components for my spacecraft 3D model, however, my printer had other plans. So, I spent most of the time I had set aside for adjusting my designs and assembling the full model on troubleshooting my non-functioning 3D printer. Luckily, after some tinkering, she is back and better than ever! Below is an image of my printer building two segments of my spacecraft solar panel array.
Orbit-Raising Maneuvers
While my 3D printer issues shifted my plans a bit this week, I was able to stay on track with my coding in MATLAB and write a code to calculate the delta-v needed for each of the three methods of translunar injection that I planned to analyze. After modeling a single burn transfer orbit, a perigee fire orbit-raising maneuver (ORM), and the ISRO orbit-raising method, I found that each of the maneuvers required very similar delta-v values, which contradicts the lower delta-v values for the two ORMs that I predicted. This week, I will further investigate these values to determine their validity. One of the ways I plan to do this is to optimize my perigee fire ORM code by implementing a while loop as opposed to a for loop, which will allow me to calculate a more accurate delta-v value for translunar injection. This is because traditionally a for loop allows for a set amount of iterations or times through a cycle (15 times through for 15 orbit-raising maneuvers in our case), whereas a while loop is allowed to cycle as many times as needed before the output meets the condition for the loop (or when the calculated apogee radius for translunar injection is achieved). This will allow for more times through the loop and therefore more precise values for delta-v. Below is an image of my current code with the for loop.
Presentation and Paper Preparation
On Tuesday, I ran through my first practice presentation and gained some great feedback and insight from Dr. Goodwin and my peers on ways to improve the presentation and make it as engaging for you all. Additionally, I was able to implement the feedback from my peer reviewed paper and improve the flow and digestibility of my report.
Agenda and Acknowledgements
This week, I will be finishing up all of the calculations and analysis that is left for my orbit-raising maneuver and determining the total delta-v and fuel expended for my Moon Bound Mission. Furthemore, I will print the rest of the components for my spacecraft and assemble them to be on display for my presentation next week. Lastly, I want to thank Dr. Goodwin for his feedback on my presentation, Dr. Farooq for his feedback on my report, and Mr. Joseph for his guidance in my calculations and code. Thanks to all of you for tuning in and I hope to see you all at my final presentation!
Ad Lunam!