Space Society Twente in 2022

Designing electronics is a thing of its own, but have you thought about how it is to design electronics that must withstand the demanding conditions of space? Indeed, designing electronics can be as difficult as you want to make it, but when your goal is to get it into orbit a plethora of new design parameters emerge.

At the AzimUT rocket team of Space Society Twente, we continuously must face some of these challenges. Our rockets might not go to space (yet), but our flight controller’s resilience against the intense environment of a rocket remains crucial, nonetheless. With continuous innovation it is furthermore important to look ahead into the challenges and requirements of the future design iterations, requiring modularity.

With all these design parameters in mind, the AzimUT team designed two PCBs for their large new rocket. With one main “flight controller” board containing the processing and logic, and another “battery holder” board for power conversion and holding the batteries.

Using the online environment, we were able to continuously monitor the producibility of our hardware, ensuring cost effectiveness and allowing for speedy production. The PCB stencil helped us to apply solder paste in a proper manner, saving time and reducing the risk of solder defects.

The two assembled PCBs can be stacked on top of each other, with more expandability options on the bottom of the flight controller PCB. The dimensions were carefully selected to fit neatly inside the avionics bay of the Finkers II rocket.

Electronics, however, is not the only place to use PCBs. The characteristics of a PCB as well their weight proved to be ideal for alternative use on the Finkers II rocket as its three fins. This unique implementation of the FR4 material gave us the precision of Eurocircuits, as well as good stiffness and weight characteristics.

With Eurocircuits’ help, we were able to create our latest, fully student made rocket from the ground up. Allowing us to learn, work together, and contribute to science in a unique way. We are thankful for the sponsorship and the amazing and robust PCBs Eurocircuits has sponsored us with!