Team Ursa

One of Ursa's biggest supporters Mide Technology just finished up their awesome video. www.mide.com https://youtu.be/dvAupob5CXU

Mide #MannequinChallenge

A great video put together by SolidWorks, a Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation sponsor. This clip highlights the mission of Mavericks and stars some of Team Ursa's own members who are working closely with the Mavericks to help develop open source reference designs that make space an achievable and inspiring laboratory for the next generation of STEM students!

3DS SolidWorks presents BornToDesign.tv From engineers to designers to part-time inventors, our desire to discover inspires us to build products the world did not even know it needed. BornToDesign.tv honors these innovative people and the products they were destined to create. Watch their stories here.

Hello World!

Team Ursa is proud to finally share our latest exploits with everyone! For the last 2 or 3 years we've been working on designing and building our latest launch vehicle, the Ursa 2.1. This last June it was finally flight tested by the Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation! You can read all about it on our updated website: http://www.teamursa.org/media.html

The launch was not without it's hiccups, but it was an exciting and educational effort providing experience to make our next research vehicles even more of a success. One particular aspect the team is proud of was a student built payload developed at Deering High School which flew on the Ursa 2.1.

The purpose of the launch was to develop reference designs for payload packing and separation rings. Our team works closely with the Mavericks to support their mission by performing R&D work, Mavericks then uses some of our design elements for later use in all sorts of cool educational programs at schools and colleges across the country (such as at Deering). Ursa and Mavericks share a passion for making sub-orbital space a more accessible laboratory for students and inspiring a deeper involvement in STEM by our youth.

https://youtu.be/mB_-chwYoe4

Mavericks Team URSA 2 1 Mercury Vehicle - Separation & Payload Test Maverick Matt Rece captures the URSA 2.1 research Mercury Reference design vehicle testing the Mavericks standard separation system developed by Maverick Luk...

Pre-launch assembly!

Plane tickets have been booked. Team Ursa is headed to Black Rock for launch this month!

The fin can fits! Yay! For those of you following the Ursa launch we've been pushed back a couple of months. We're hoping to get of the ground beginning of December, but between the FAA, weather, and unreliable suppliers it's really hard to keep anything written in stone.

Team Ursa gathered this past weekend to begin assembling the Ursa 2.1 launch vehicle. This was a very exciting weekend as the team was able to work with the various components in the physical world as opposed to just viewing the designs. The weekend was also an oppurtunity for the team to come together. The Ursa 2.1 is set to launch next month!

We would like to thank Mide Technology for allowing us to use their shop. Their support was indispensable.

Throwback Thursday! Here's the team back in 2011. Left to right is Robbie Miller, Josh Mueller, Ryan Means, Alex Morrow, Gerard Desjardins, and Luke Saindon

Here's a clip of Luke working on the CNC lathe at Midé, this particular part is for a payload separation system on the Ursa 2.1 to be flown in October (tentative).

Ursa 2.1 Fabrication http://teamursa.org http://facebook.com/TeamUrsa1 http://rocketmavericks.com

Cut the fins out and welded up the fin can today. Even if 90% of the other components are finished this is the one part that makes you go "damn, I'm building a rocket, cool!". Ursa 2.1 launch October (tentative).

Electrical engineers on Team Ursa are an endangered species, but Ben Spencer has been hard at work developing a prototype attitude control system to test during our upcoming launch as well as designing the more basic wire harnesses for the LCX flight computers (image below). During our October launch there will be redundant processing for every event, powered by separate batteries and controlling separate black powder charges. Team Ursa uses basic 4F black powder for separating the airframe at apogee as well as for deploying the recovery parachutes. The power systems and communications systems for the flight computers are accessible from outside the airframe through special ports. This is useful so that the team doesn't need to dismantle the rocket if a battery charge or programming tweak is needed.

So as you can see, Ben is a valuable asset to the team and despite having other commitments, he always finds the time to share his expertise. Thanks, Ben!

Most of the parts are coming together! Team Ursa is doing major vehicle assembly on the 12th of September, in preparation for launch of the Ursa 2.1 mid October (weather permitting) on the playa in Black Rock Nevada!