Lander Vehicle

Texas A&M University Sounding Rocketry Team

Overview

While the Texas A&M University Sounding Rocketry Team (TAMU SRT) was participating in the Collegiate Propulsive Lander Challenge (CPLC), the team worked to develop a self-landing, throttle-able, rocket powered lander vehicle, named Hadron. There were five CPLC milestones for competing teams to achieve, with cash prizes for the first few teams to reach each milestone.

Devin worked under the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) team for this project, who developed all the necessary algorithms to fly and land the lander vehicle, validating them through modeling and simulation, and testing. During his time on SRT, the GNC team worked towards testing their GNC algorithms on a sub-scale, electric VTOL version of SRT's lander vehicle, MiniMav, as well as the throttle controller for the full-scale vehicle engine, Gluon.

SRT successfully hot-fired the full-scale lander vehicle's hybrid engine, Gluon, for the first time in College Station, Texas, on April 20th, 2025.

Gluon.mp4

(VOLUME WARNING!)

Technical Work

Devin designed the first iteration of the Guidance, Navigation, and Control algorithm for the Lander Vehicle. This GNC algorithm was composed of an LQG (Linear Quadratic Gaussian) controller, a combination a Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) with a Kalman Filter (MATLAB & Simulink).

Devin also modeled the flight dynamics of the Lander Vehicle and worked with fellow team members on CFD analysis to model the aerodynamic properties of the electric sub-scale vehicle. Devin and the GNC team worked to implement these algorithms onto the flight computer's software (C++) for the sub-scale electric VTOL test vehicle to use as a proof of concept of their algorithms. The electric VTOL test vehicle was a 1% model by thrust and mass, making it a 5 lb sub-scale model of the 500 lb lander vehicle. This electric test vehicle had full 6 degree-of-freedom motion, allowing for attitude control, velocity control, and positional control.

Additionally, Devin and the GNC team developed the throttle controller for the Gluon Engine (full-scale lander engine) through test data, signal processing, and system identification methods. While the lander vehicle was still under development, the GNC team continued the modeling and simulation of the lander vehicle, testing regions of stability and tuning the GNC algorithms to achieve better performance while minimizing propellant usage.