Space travel - The Bronze manus® 2017

More than 30,000 objects are moving as space debris in orbit. This debris poses a danger for satellites. The student project UB-space deals with the analysis of how parts are moving in space. This system, built by the students, is a new ejection mechanism for space travel. To discover how an object moves in space, a cube-shaped object had to be thrown out of the rocket to record data with the help of a camera system and other sensors. The indented ejection mechanism consists of 2 Nema 11 stepper motors, each connected with a threaded spindle via coupling. The opposite side is mounted to the wall of the rocket – via a 3D printed nut made of iglidur® J260-Tribo-Filament. The object, the so-called “Free Falling Unit” (FFU) is ejected with an adjustable and precisely definable ejection speed from the module. To guarantee an ejection without friction, the tread of the ejection chute is lined with plastic sliding film Tribo-Tape made of iglidur® V400. Spring-loaded mechanisms, which did not meet with the requirements, were previously used. Besides being temperature resistant, having a low weight and being durable, the flexible usability of the igus® products is above all outstanding! Thanks to optimal glide features, an ejection is guaranteed without tilting. After extensive tests, the system has been applied to the sounding rocket RXUS 21 in March 2017.