Shake N’ Bake

Mission system: SAIL

Challenge: Teams had to design an active-control descent vehicle capable of separating from the main rocket airframe and actively flying itself to a soft landing using rotors, propellers, or thrust vectoring.

Design/Execution: The payload was named SAIL (STEMnauts Atmosphere Independent Lander). Its goal was to safely transport four STEMnaut figures from the launch vehicle to the ground without the use of a parachute, using a contra-rotating set of rotor blades powered by an electric motor. SAIL was housed inside a deployment bay attached to the nose cone. The deployment bay contained an RF-controlled electronic latch that retained SAIL during flight. During descent, the deployment bay separated from the launch vehicle at the main parachute ejection event and descended under the nose cone parachute. Once RSO permission was granted, the RF-controlled latch released SAIL from the deployment bay, at which point the rotor blades unfolded, and the motor began spinning them, generating lift to slow the descent. The rotor blades operated based on pre-derived lift curves until landing. SAIL was designed to land in an upright orientation on four deployed landing legs.

During the competition flight, the deployment bay retention and separation systems performed as designed. However, immediately following SAIL’s release, an unexpected ESC failure occurred, preventing the rotors from generating sufficient thrust. Lacking aerodynamic deceleration, SAIL sustained a hard landing. Despite the payload failure, the launch vehicle itself performed successfully, securing the team a 5th-place overall competition finish.

You can read more about sail here.