Winner of Secondary School Category

Design a Rocket Challenge 2020 – secondary entries 1

  Winner of Secondary School Category
             Comments from UK Space Agency:
  “This is a wonderfully drawn overview of a lunar mission,
  including lots of detailed drawings of individual parts of a
rocket (including the rocket engines) and the mission profile.
        Great attention to detail and highly accurate!”

                            Megan
   The next page shows rocket design and payload detail.

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Runner Up in Secondary School Category
                Comments from UK Space Agency:
“This is a very cool design of a spaceplane, with clever use of bio-mimicry.
    I particularly like that it has been designed to limit it's harm to the
environment, and that the colours have been inspired by the UKSA logo.”

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   Shortlisted Secondary School Entry

Darcy

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          Shortlisted Secondary School Entry
     Following are excerpts from a 39 page document with multiple mission objectives including
                                       Ganymede landing….
Lunar mission Ganymede
The scientific value of a lunar mission to Ganymede:
Ganymede is the only moon in our solar system to own its own magnetic field. This planet has not been explored yet, and
may offer many opportunities in space exploration to see the
possibility of life and water on the planet.
The probe could take samples of the rock and sediment for
analysis and transfer the data back to earth.
Analysis of the atmosphere and the magnetic field would also
prove useful in gathering scientific data about the moon.
The surface could be monitored by mission control 24/7 to scan
for any anomalies or events that we would not have seen from
deeper space.
Teams could analyse different parts of the planet through
different parts of scientific equipment. As the payload is 30
Tonnes, a lot of science equipment can be stored, such as deeper
drills, mini rovers, larger surface scanners and telescopes.
My rocket can deliver large payloads, potentially even multiple
rovers or probes to explore multiple moons at once or the same
surface for a larger analysis of a given surface. This example is
given as a landing probe to Ganymede.
The rocket's power allows a payload to be delivered directly to
the needed planet, and the ion engines allow for extended
missions, with four times the power, it can slow down much
quicker than single ion engines which allow capture burns to be
quicker.
The given example uses a single heavy probe to a single
destination for simplicity as an example on how the rocket can be used to reach its destination. It assumes the perfect
circumstances for the given flight path.

DeltaV requirements:
Ground to Low Earth Orbit: 9400m/s
LEO to Geostationary Orbit: 2440m/s
GO to earth escape orbit: 770m/s
Earth to Jupiter Transfer: 3090m/s
Jupiter Transfer to Ganymede transfer: 2180m/s
Ganymede transfer to Ganymede Capture: 4790m/s
Ganymede Capture to low Ganymede orbit: 790m/s
Low Ganymede orbit to Ganymede: 1970m/s
Total DeltaV: 25 430m/s

The amount of DeltaV is much less than the total deltaV of the rocket,
thus much heavier payloads can be carried to a single moon or many
different moons.

Alexander

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Shortlisted Secondary School Entry

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           Shortlisted Secondary School Entry
THE AUGURY
The aim of the Augury is to further
explore Jupiter’s system, particularly the
icy Galilean moons – Europa, Ganymede
and Callisto – in order to gain a better
insight on the area for future crewed
missions and the setting up of
permanent bases following the success
of current efforts to settle on the Moon
and then Mars.
The rocket is named Augury partially
because this is defined as “a sign of
what will happen in the future”, which I
believe will be the case eventually as
humanity’s innate curiosity pushes us to
explore as far as we are capable of. The
other reason is its relation to
mythology: as Jupiter is an aerial god,
his primary sacred animal is the eagle
which held priority over other birds in
the ancient Roman religious practice of
Augury to interpret omens (good or
bad). This seems fitting as we will be
interpreting Jupiter’s system of moons
for a possible future there, as well as for
a better understanding of our solar
system.
To get to Jupiter’s orbit and be able to
access its moons, the Augury will have 4
stages, so is a relatively large rocket.
The first stage lifts the rocket off the
ground, and my design utilises solid fuel
boosters, which is advantageous as
greater thrust can be produced with a
simpler, safer and cheaper design so
that less thrust needs to be produced by
the main liquid engine, allowing more
fuel space for the other stages and
decreasing the rockets overall mass.
After MECO, the second stage will get
the spacecraft into low earth orbit, and
gravity assist around the planet will help
accelerate the craft without using more
fuel to propel towards Jupiter.
The second stage will help the third before it cuts off in executing the burn towards Jupiter, and the third will get the craft into
Jupiter’s orbit, as well as assisting transport close to specific moons.
The fourth will ensure the mission lasts and to assist sending separate spacecraft into orbit around the moons and until the
rockets suicide mission into Jupiter following how useful Cassini’s was in giving more precise data about the planet’s composition
while its antenna was able to point towards Earth. This also means re-entry to Earth isn’t a concern for the mission, allowing the
design to be cheaper.
The head of the rocket holds a capsule, part of final stage of the rocket. This will be fairly long, with its base holding a section for
fuel, which is surrounded in solar panels to get electricity to help power the electronics and equipment aboard. The next section
contains some hatches, which when necessary will use robotics to launch satellites and small spacecraft towards the specific moon
in order to collect data on it. Some of these may contain land vehicles to find information from the surface. They will all contain an
antenna allowing data to be sent back to Earth, whether this is directly or through the capsule.
The top of the capsule will contain a range of scientific instruments along with the daughter spacecraft in order to record data and
take photographs in different wavelengths (visible light, infrared, ultraviolet etc.). These could be temperature sensors, mapping,
magnetometers, spectrometers, sounding/radar instruments, and anything else that could be useful. This will allow the Augury to
send useful and in depth data of the moons and more on Jupiter itself for analysis on Earth.
Your first name and age: Dana, 17

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   Shortlisted Secondary School Entry
This entrant provided a rather splendid associated animation of both space vehicles,
                        3D modelled, gliding through space.

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We received many entries with brilliant
ideas and designs. Selecting ‘the best’
        was a very hard task.

 There is hope for the future of space
             engineering.

   Many thanks for all the brilliant
     submissions that follow.

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       Akshar

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I’m 18 and this is my idea for an asteroid farming space shuttle. The flight path is from Earth/ Mars
to the asteroid belt in between Mars and Jupiter to harvest rare metals. An example being the
Psyche asteroid which is worth $700 quintillion.

Rather than a traditional payload the rocket has equipment for electrolysis mining to process whilst
on the asteroid for space and trip efficiency. The systems only has 3 components Hydrogen Oxygen
and electricity. Hydrogen powers the engines and Oxygen for the astronauts to breath but this can
be combined to create a high pressure water drill with the liquid and metal ions forming an
electrolyte solution

Jamie

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Matt, Secondary, BioPod: Solution to Growing Food on Other Worlds

● Rocket is fueled by Methane, using Liquid Oxygen as an oxidizer. Both substances can be produced on Mars
and other bodies, allowing the price of each launch to be reduced by reusing rockets.

● 2 stage design, allowing the craft to reach orbit with the first stage, then refuel and use the second stage for
orbital insertion on other worlds.

● This payload will help the UK Space Agency to establish a role as one of the founding members of the first
Mars colony by providing one of the most vital resources; food.

● The payload is a hydroponic growth system designed to establish food production before human settlers
arrive on another world, specifically Mars.

→ The pod will move out from orbit using small thrusters, which it can also use to reduce its velocity when
digging into the planet surface.

→ It is dropped on a partially icy
area, so that the system can
harvest water from the ice. The
heat shield on the front also acts
as a spike to dig into the ice.

→ A drill on the side mines the
regolith for minerals, which are
transported up to the plants via
the water stream.

→ Finally, a small nuclear-fueled
reactor is used to both melt the
ice, and to provide electricity to
the module.

● Seeds are pre-planted in
inflatable bags on the central
column. CO 2 from the
atmosphere is cycled through
the bags at a rate optimised for
plant growth. The light received
by the plants will be less than on
Earth, due to Mars’ further
distance from the Sun, therefore
crops that can withstand low
light levels should be used.

● Many of these pods could be
landed in one area, possibly by a
SpaceX Starship or other large
spacecraft.

● Upon the first manned
missions to Mars, they should
have a reliable backup of food
production to help kickstart the
colony/ provide redundancy in case of food loss.

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Abhinav

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        David

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      Thomas

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       Caitlin

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    Our Team - Team Neptune - is a team of five Year 7
    students (4 boys, 1 girl)

    Team Name - Neptune Programme

    Team Resources - design and flight details attached and
    full entry including videos etc found at
    https://thomaswebsites.wixsite.com/rocketcompetition

    Of particular interest will be the all the finished tasks and
    videos on
    https://thomaswebsites.wixsite.com/rocketcompetition/finishedtasks

    https://thomaswebsites.wixsite.com/rocketcompetition/designandflightplan

    https://thomaswebsites.wixsite.com/rocketcompetition/about

    All work from rocket design through the CAD drawings
    through to website design was completed entirely by the
    students and with no input by teachers.

    We hope you enjoy looking at the website as much as we
    enjoyed taking part.

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