CANSAT: Multiphysical experimental design of a probe come-back mission

International audienceEarth reentry and recovering of a small space probe (typical of a students’ project satellite) set questions related to guidance and control. If the probe is asked to reach a target point with constraints on the landing precision, then other questions related to the foil and to the complete system performance arise. In this frame, the aim of the present work is to design, to build and to operate a decelerator system that is automatically controlled by the satellite probe in the objective to reach an a priori chosen landing point with a required precision. This multiphysics project involves at the same time design and fabrication of the decelerator (parafoil and suspension lines), flight mechanics of the deformable decelerator, guidance and control development, system engineering of the probe development. The project is divided in two similar but distinct projects. The first one called ”small probe" (33 cL / up to 350 g, International Class) aims to improve the complete system global performance with the goal of precise landing and in-flight missions, for a low altitude release configuration. The ”small probe" student's project aims the French CanSat challenge, an international competition organised in France by CNES and Planète Sciences Association. The second one is to launch a ”big probe" (1 L / up to 1 kg) from a 1/25th scale replica of the Soyouz Rocket developed by a partner student’s team of Samara State Aerospace University (Russia). The latter case aims to test previous developments in more complex and severe release and descent conditions