A Micro Glider for stratospheric flight: design, manufacturing and testing

The thesis project presented hereby aims at the development and testing of a scaled gliding vehicle capable of soaring from the upper layers of the atmosphere down to ground. This work finds its origins within a Thales Alenia Space internal venture, called SpArks, accelerated by the Space Business Catalyst (SBC), the industrial accelerator launched by the company’s Innovation Cluster. Its goal is to create a totally new way of getting broad audience to know science, technology and expertise coming from the Space industry: a digital edutainment platform profiting from real Space assets with dedicated instrumentation, giving birth to the Playable Space Asset (PSAs) concept. After this venture’s first activities using stratospheric balloons as flying platforms, the next area of research concentrates on involving a more advanced flying machine: a remote-controlled glider, which will take the name of Space Dart. The objectives of this project are mainly focused on creating a ground-controlled aircraft capable of following a desired flight path and returning to the ground while streaming telemetry data and video live feed. In order to pursue the aforementioned objectives, a full design process has been carried out. In the first place, the main requirements for this product have been analyzed resulting in a detailed list of aerodynamic, structural and controllability performances as well as in an evaluation of the on-board systems structure. This lead to a first phase of avionics design carried out relying on off-the-shelf components. After this, the core study of this work is concentrated on aerodynamics and flight dynamics: to this end, an iterative procedure has been implemented to obtain the geometric details of the glider. Fluid dynamics evaluation software as OpenVSP and Xfoil have been used in this phase. Once in possession of these characteristics, a detailed 3D modeling of the aircraft followed. SolidWorks has been the main tool used for this purpose and in order to run CFD and structural FEM analysis as well. Once obtained a final design and after having sorted out the best manufacturing technique, the model has been 3D printed and eventually integrated with the electronics mentioned before. The main outcome of this project is a fully-operative prototype of the Space Dart the venture is interested in. In addition, validation and testing of the platform have been conducted, proving the success and evaluating the accuracy of the before mentioned activities. Follow-ups to this work include, but are not limited to, outdoor flight testing in a real life operating scenario and further optimization of the vehicle itself regarding its aerodynamic properties, structural materials and on-board devices.