Experiment during the flight

The goal of the 0 g experiments is to valid our propulsion, attitude correction and control system in real use conditions.

The experiments in the plane will take place in an area of about 2 x 2 x 2 [m], delimited by nets on the sides. The freeflyer will always start from its "Docking Station" that allows it to have a reference at the beginning. The Docking Station is situated in the flying area. The different parameters will be monitored via the "Control Station" which is on the other side of the net.

There will be 2 of us during each flight. One of the team members will be in charge of the freeflyer. He will have to release it when the microgravity will be stabilised, to watch after it during the flight and to bring it back to its base before the 2 g phase.

We've planned to perform 2 types of experiments:

For the preprogrammed trajectories, the freeflyer will receive a trajectory order that it will try to perform. As the Colibri won't have any information about it's position, the movement will be realised in open loop (without feedback about the succes of the manoeuvre to correct it).

The preloaded trajectories will allow us to test our propulsion systems before the second part of the experiments.

For the target tracking tests, the freeflyer will use its embed Webcam to recognize an object by its color. Thus it will be able to compute its position compared with the target and use this information to correct its trajectory in closed loop.