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RESEARCH PROJECT

ICARUS

Founded in 2020, ICARUS is a research and development project on active attitude control technologies for future rocket teams. These technologies are crucial throughout the flight to control the trajectory and its smooth progress. The main objective is also to get our rockets back by landing them propulsively by reigniting their engines in the same way SpaceX is known to do, thus training students in technologies that are crucial to lowering the cost to reach space.

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Specifications

Year:
2025/2026
Goal:
Vehicle capable of propulsive landing
Team members:
an integer
Logotype

Highlights

3.5 g
withstandable radial acceleration
10 g
withstandable axial acceleration

Our mission is to create a vehicle capable of propulsive landing as well as a platform for EPFL Rocket Team to develop technologies pertaining to active control and thrust vectoring for use in future vehicles. Such an usage would be a dedicated module on-board the next Firehorn-class rocket. We aim to foster learning opportunities for students and bring our association closer to space through innovative engineering and collaborative efforts.

GNC Algorithms

Even though the ICARUS project works on concrete technologies, the base of the project remains the development of the various control, navigation and guidance algorithms. These algorithms aim to control the stability of the rocket as well as to optimize its trajectory throughout the flight in order to reach its objective, and in a near future to succeed in landing it.

Due to the complexity of the task and the number of parameters taken into account, the team chose to use predictive control techniques based on a dynamic model previously developed on a simulator. From the flight data collected by our avionics, this technique makes it possible to anticipate in quasi real time the future evolution of the state of the rocket and thus to optimize the control instructions.

Hopper

OVERVIEW

The Hopper, a pioneering vehicle showing off the ERT versatility, is a new vehicle with custom control systems and homemade structure, GNC algorithms and electronics. Capable of propulsive landing, it is propelled by our bi-liquid DEMO A3 engine.

AVIONICS BAY

Composed of 4 main parts, the avionics hardware collects the sensor data, treats it and feeds it to GNC to subsequently actuate the H-AC motor.

UPPER STRUCTURE

The Hopper's Upper Structure consists of Nordend's coaxial tank system, a COPV tank, the Avionics bay, and the Battery box.

MIDDLE STRUCTURE

As the central part of the Hopper, the Middle Structure consists as a interface between legs and Upper structure. Mounted on it are the batteries, FTS, COPV, and propulsion interfaces.

GIMBAL

Built with cross-spring pivots, the 2 degree of freedom gimbal mechanism assures Thrust Vector Control (TVC) required to develop an actively controlled hopper vehicle.

LEGS

Designed to land the Hopper and absorb the shock, the legs of the Hopper are comprised of one central leg equipped with a damper and two lateral legs.

Drones

Why do we have drones?
The drone subsytem is part of the Icarus project. Because we do not have the means of crashing a rocket once every 3 months (looking at you SpaceX), we need a way of testing algorithms, avionics and various systems before launching a rocket-powered vehicle. The drones are meant to be small, cheap, reusable, repairable and eventually disposable.
My dad has a camera drone, how are yours any different?
Our drones approximate the dynamical behaviour of a rocket. The first thing is that they have a high weight-to-thrust ratio (as usually does a rocket-powered vehicle). Their center of gravity is also way outside their center of thrust, hence they are quite difficult to control and need comprehensive algorithms. They are built in a specific way such as to ensure that they match the design intent and requirements of both the Hopper and their own.
How are drones useful?
We have two objectives with the drone subsytem. The first one is to build and maintain a fleet of said drones. The second objective is to serve as a test platform for cutting-edge technologies developped quickly from idea to integration to be used at a later date on other projects.
Made from functionally efficient, innovative bi-material 3D-printed (PETG + TPU), the 3-pylon, 3 legs drone design is lighter, more flexible and allows better disassembly.