The team pushed hard on Tandem Saturday. There were lots of small changes and one big one.
The big change was the recovery system. After it’s flight Tandem releases it’s balloons and deploys a parachute. We had a large parachute cannon near the nose that used a cold gas and piston system to throw out the chute. Last week we conducted six ejection tests. It worked but pretty anemic. I was really looking for the parachute to be thrown five to six feet away from the structure. We been making steady improvements on it, however it really needs a bit of a redesign and there just isn’t time. We decided to go back to old, reliable basket deployment that we use on Away missions. Off came the cannon and on went five baskets and small chute arrayed down the length of Tandem. The good part is that we saved 2.5 pounds, unfortunately we ate up that weight in bigger propulsion batteries. The change meant that we had to do a complete rebalancing of Tandem.
Other things accomplished:
All camera housings completed and two mounted.
Motor RPM and temperature sensors mounted.
New motor controller housing insulation sleeve made.
Main system controller wiring harness modified.
Corner bumpers made and installed.