Category: Simulation
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Getting snake-y
One of the disadvantages of being out of college is your free MATLAB subscription goes away. As a result, I’m making the switch to Python. Besides consistently being off-by-one due to zero indexing, I like Python quite a bit. Getting a 4th order RK solver to work was about as intuitive as getting ode45 to…
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Learning to land
As part of my Master’s degree, I took a Robotics independent study class in my last semester. After 4 years of undergrad and one semester of grad school, I finally got to explore my own completely independent project over the course of a 3 month semester (this was all in early 2017, I’m just getting…
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Titan Entry, Descent, & Landing
Background My senior design course involved creating a baseline design for a mission to Titan, Saturn’s most well-known moon. We picked Titan because it has amazing potential for breakthrough discoveries from both a planetary science and astrobiology perspective. This is largely due to the methane atmosphere and carbon rich environment. A methane atmosphere means a “methane…
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Interplanetary Interception
Its a fall weekend, so some form of football, whether it be college or NFL, is on most people’s minds. But football isn’t the only place where interceptions are interesting. Interplanetary interception trajectories are pretty amazing in their own right. They are the only way for us to actually reach another planet efficiently. For example, if…
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Preliminary Plots 2
First cut, second post. Last time I mostly talked about the background and inner workings of the attitude dynamics simulation I’ve upgraded. Now I’ll talk a bit more about the advanced stuff that’s included. I mentioned the mechanisms that allow our little CubeSat to orient itself to where we want, and promised to talk about how…