Parachutes (Part 1)

Over the last week, we have have been working on the parachute system.  Our current parachute deployment system is spring powered as opposed to a CO2 or pyrotechnic system.  The main benefit of a spring launched parachute is that it is reusable.  This is especially useful for the test payload which will fly multiple times.  The springs must be capable of launching a ~1.5 m (5 ft) parachute at least 0.6 m (2 ft) into the air, high enough to give the parachute time to deploy.  The first model we tested, was a single spring version of the system.  Tests revealed that it was far too weak.  We then built a larger version with four springs, hoping it would have enough power to give us the launch height we needed.  Below is the video of a test of the four spring parachute system.

We will be performing more parachute tests in the coming weeks.

Part 2 here.

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