All projects
NASA Dragonfly rotor testing
Running the half-scale test stand for the octocopter bound for Saturn's moon Titan.
- When
- 2021
- My role
- Undergraduate researcher
- Where
- Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Dragonfly is NASA’s rotorcraft lander mission to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Penn State was brought in to design the blades.
My advisor, the M.S. student on the project and I drove down to APL to test on the half-scale stand. When the others were pulled into meetings during our test window, I ran the full test series the APL researchers had planned.
What I did
- Penn State designed the rotor blades for Dragonfly in collaboration with Johns Hopkins APL.
- At APL I ran the scheduled test series on the half-scale stand myself: stand and sensor setup, motor control, and keeping the stand healthy.
- Performed a frequency-response test on the stand using a shaker to find its harmonic frequencies.
Video
Photos
