UPC Space Program (ARES)
UPC Space Program is an interdisciplinary, university student organization from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, which takes a hands-on approach on aerospace related projects.
Founded in 2017, UPC Space Program was born from the fusion of older student associations of the UPC. Fast forward to 2024, our association has more than 80 future engineers not only from the Aerospace field, but also from other disciplines like industrial, electronic, mechanical or computer science.
Nowadays, the association is working on four projects: ARES, which focuses on high power rocketry; GRASS, the only mission in Spain that competes internationally in the European Rover Challenge, held in Poland; ATLAS, which will compete in the “Student Air Race”, in Munich, and Horus, which is working on participating at the “Fly Your Satellite” program by ESA.
One of the current projects, ARES, will compete next year in the EuRoC, the most prestigious European rocketry competition, organized by the Portuguese Space Agency and supported by ESA. Our newest rocket, DUC, will be a three meter, supersonic, carbon fiber vehicle powered by a solid rocket motor, and it will fly under the 3Km category for solid rocket motors.
Nevertheless, our long trajectory has given us plenty of time to test previous model rockets, usually in the Monegro’s desert, in Aragón. Our latest launch was in September, during the Spanish Rocketry Meeting, where we launched two rockets with an apogee of 1Km. Below is a link to the recap of the launch day.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DAeIz5MA6bi/?hl=es
Our incoming projects and the expected growth that will carry would not be possible without the help and support from companies, like PCBWay, who are willing to invest some of their time and resources into making all this possible.
As for DUC, we are planning on greatly improving the electronics and avionics systems of our rocket. We have already developed three PCBs, two with their BOMs attached to this post. These PCBs will belong to the following subsystems:
- Altimeter: The altimeter consists of a two layer PCB capable of calculating the flight apogee in real time and measuring acceleration and orientation from the rocket. It is also able to send live data about the current position and altitude, and has a built-in GPS for enhanced tracking. This new altimeter would belong to the version 2.5 of our custom made “MariAlt” altimeter.
- Ground Station: We have developed a brand new ground station that will be able to receive signal from the rocket such as position, altitude and orientation. Along with a computer science team from the UPC, we will design a graphic user interface that will render a 3D instance of the rocket’s orientation and position over a map in real time.
- Ignition Board: The ignition board will be a fundamental PCB that will communicate with the Ground Station to ignite the rocket from a safe distance. This PCB is designed to be as energy efficient as possible, to be able to mount the rocket and this subsystem on the launch pad for large amounts of time.
Additionally, we have started the design of an active control system to climb exactly to an altitude of 3Km without exceeding. Such system is called an airbrake, and will deploy an extendable surface that will increase the amount of drag to slow the vehicle down.
Our team would greatly benefit from a PCBWay Sponsorship thanks to their leadership in the PCB market. As for now, we have always faced with issues related to PCB design due to slow manufacturing processes and assembly of components. If PCBWay were to support us, we would be able to handle prototyping faster and therefore achieve our goals.
In return we would compromise to promote PCBWay content on our social media pages, and our PCBs would include PCBWay logo on them as a sign of the sponsorship. We are eager about this opportunity to collaborate with PCBWay and elevate our avionics through their support!
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