Lab Improvement

October 7th 2020:

CPCL has begun its restructure to a more subsystem-focused organization. New subsystem teams are being created one-by-one with the goal that all pertinent subsystems will have infrastructure established by the end of the quarter. So far, the Systems  Engineering, Testing and Facilities, and Structures and Mechanisms teams have started weekly meetings. Electrical Power Systems, Communications, Space Environments, and Attitude Determination and Control are next. Each team will begin by working with the lab managers to define the roles and responsibilities of the members within their team, meeting with the project leads to coordinate needs and tasks, establishing trainings for new members, and creating meetings for both experienced and new members to communicate across projects and ensure that consistent approaches are taken regarding that subsystem. Meanwhile, discipline leads are shifting their focus towards recruitment, new member induction, and culture creation within the lab.

ISP-POD

April 2021:

This month, the ISP-POD team been building their 2021–2022 team. Project lead, Grace Guarraia is excited to prepare new members for research and is aiming to wrap up thermal analysis this quarter. She hopes in the next month, the team will start doing radiation analysis for ISP-POD.

August-September 2020:

The goal of the SURP is to design a thermal control system that can regulate the spacecraft’s temperature for the duration of an interplanetary journey. To that effect, the team has been focusing on creating an accurate thermal model to represent the spacecraft in the most extreme environments it might experience. Additionally, they have been developing a control algorithm that will be the brain behind their active thermal control. The combination of these will allow the team to simulate the ISP-POD’s thermal environment and how it reacts to that environment.