Nordend - EuRoc 2023 Launch Raw Cut

Nordend is the first student made bi-liquid sounding rocket of Switzerland.

Made by EPFL students it flew at EuRoc 2023 in the SRAD bi liquid 3km category. The team was the first on the launch pad among the 25 other teams, and finished second on design excellence ranking.

After a successfull ignition our launch vehicle suffered from an early shutdown of it's engine. A faulty battery pack leading to pressurisation failure is the main hypothethis to this shortened flight. The lack of events might be due to low acceleration, not triggering the recovery electronics.
All of the hypothethis listed above are still under investigation by the team and should not be considered as definitive conclusions.

Thanks to our team for their hard work on this beautiful project and thanks to our sponsors for their support.

We got 99 percent right, still 1 percent to iron out.
Next up : Bi liquid hopper and 30 km class bi liquid rockets !

/// Launch Vehicule Specifications ///

Diameter : 6 [in]
Length : 3.69 [m]
Dry mass : 36.982 [kg]
Wet mass : 44.982 [kg]
Top Speed : 0.85 [Mach]

/// Subsystem Details ///

Payload :
- Low gravity plasma activated water
- Studies feasability of disinfected water production in orbit

Recovery :
- SRAD Reefed parachute system
- Fully redundant system

Avionics :
- SRAD pcbs and software
- Engine control
- Live Telemetry sharing
- Antenna panels
- Custom GPS board

Structure :
- CFRP / Aluminium modular internal structure
- Aluminium Coaxial Tanks
- Screwed coupling system
- Clamp band separation mechanism design
- Retractable rail buttons
- Imbedded bending analysis piezos sensors
- Student-made composites, in collaboration with APCO Technologies
- Lightweight design (17.8 [kg] weight total)

Propulsion :
- Demo A2 bi-liquid engine
- 2 [kN] peak thrust
- Ethanol / N20
- 40 [bars] tank pressure
- 25 [bars] chamber pressure
- Passively cooled
- Pintle injection technology
- Graphite nozzle
- Fully machined and tested in house


• Hyperion - Demo A2 10s SFT


• Nordend - VSFT Campaign

Ground Support :
- Remote controlled filling device
- Homemade ground control unit
- Camera tracker guided by telemetry or human input
- Antenna tracker guided by telemetry or human input
- Rocket flight live app

Flight Dynamics :
- Optimised subsonic nosecone shape
- Adjustable fin design

/// Links ///