Tag Archive: Progeny Mk5 Flight 2

The second flight of the Progeny Mk5 was another success and very similar to that of the first flight in terms of trajectory and timing, which is a good sign because both flights were flown nearly the same way. As mentioned in our analysis of the first flight there were errors made in pitch calculation and TWR during the ascent which were corrected in this ascent. The changes were minor and did not affect the flight all that much – both rockets reached a 94km apokee and did so within one second of each other, both landed within 2 seconds of each other and both traveled the same amount of distance within 1km. During this flight the Automated Flight Control System took greater control over the rocket, decoupling the spent boosters, shredding the 3rd stage fins and actively monitoring the pitch. Flight controllers only had to activate the engines and throttle the 3rd stage to maintain a TWR of 2. The extra instructions running during the initial ascent up to MECO led to a greater power draw, but we also optimized the code that was checking for the parachute to be deployed and actually landed with more battery power available. There are several things we plan to do for this third flight based on the telemetry data that we have reviewed and also given that this flight will be the first to carry instruments in the payload section.

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