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2024

  • in Info
  • 1 min read

Rockets 101

Last Wednesday we had our Rockets 101 tutorial, which had a great turnout of over 100 people!

The presentation taught the basics of rocketry, including history, engines, and all of the physics that our teams will need to keep in mind while constructing their rocket.

Big thanks to our guest speaker Zeul, who taught us about solid rocket motors.

Hope to see everyone at our first OpenRocket tutorial happening today at 6pm!!

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  • 2 min read

Kickoff Meeting

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to our Kickoff Meeting last Friday! It was an amazing success and we had over 130 interested students show up. We're happy to see that people are hyped, and can't wait to get all of the fun stuff started!

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Big shoutout and congratulations to the top 3 teams from last year!

In FIRST PLACE, SRAG!!! alt text

In SECOND PLACE, Lockheed Interns! alt text

In THIRD PLACE, Lunar Wolves! alt text

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Leads Assemble!!

MARS is ready for another stellar year! We've got an amazing team working on a great set of tutorials and much more for you guys, can't wait to start it all off! See you this Friday at the Kickoff Meeting!

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Launch Canada

Launch Canada was a huge success! We aquired 7 L1's for our team members! We hope to get L2s and L3s at LC 2026! (We got merch btw)

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Eng Expo

Eng Expo was a succuss! 70 people signed up for Mars 2024-2025! alt text

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Avionics Session Success

The avionics sessions was a success!! Eight teams got their avionics to successfully transmit telemetry from their flight computer to their ground station! Here's some photos!

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  • 2 min read

Avionics Session on April 25th

We're going to have our major avionics tutorial on April 25th from 2-6pm at the DME. We'll have free pizza for everyone who is on a team and who clicked interested on the Discord event!

What you need for the session:

  • Laptop
  • Your avionics kit

What you should do before the session:

We will be going over:

Part 1

  1. Setting up flight computers
    • Set voltage level
  2. Install Teensy software
  3. Programming boards
    • Blink test
    • Download code from GitHub and load it onto the Arduino
  4. Record data from the SD card and check it on computers
  5. Set antenna channels
  6. Setting up ground stations
    • Download Raspberry Pi Imager
    • Select RASPBERRY PI OS LITE (64-BIT)
    • Click the gear icon in the bottom right. Set hostname to your team name. Set password, and send it to your team's Discord chat on the Mars competition server. Enable SSH. Everything else is optional.
    • Plug in SD card, select it, click write.
    • Plug in Pis to network
    • ** Linux :**
    • ssh username@hostname.local
    • ls, ls -al, cd, mkdir, rm, rm -r, sudo, permissions, users, groups
    • install git sudo apt install git
    • clone repo git clone https://github.com/marstmu/groundstation.git
    • install python library sudo apt install python3-serial
    • sudo raspi-config
    • Run gs.py with python python gs.py

Part 2

  1. Soldering GPS battery
  2. Committing to your team's documentation repo
  3. clone
  4. change, commit
  5. PR

Notes for the leads

  • Each team will
  • ci.yml needs to include updating to the latest commit for submodules
  • Pizza for people
  • Opportunity for teams to solder beforehand
  • Solder surface mounted battery holders
  • Need multimeters, screwdrivers
  • Pis all need hostnames and a label on them
  • Need UDR and both switches
  • Dry run
  • Adapter
  • soldering irons and fume hoods
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Giving Out Avionics Kits At Rocketry Conference

We will be giving out the avionics kits this Saturday, March 16th, at the TMU Rocketry Conference! Please sign up if you haven't already. The first step in assembling your avionics kit is soldering. Each team will need to find time to go to the DME to solder their components. The soldering must be completed within three weeks, as that is when the programming session will take place. We'll post a link to the soldering documentation here on Friday. Each team will sign a contract with information on returning/purchasing the kits.

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