Humans have been intrigued by the question of whether life exists out there since our inception. That fundamental curiosity inspired great people to go where no man has gone before. Venus is one such planet which is worth the visit. Venus has super high-temperature and super-rotation density layers, where winds speeds are 60 times the speed of the rotation of the earth. Despite the harsh conditions on the surface, things are similar to earth-like conditions just about 50 km above surface level. Hence, the upper atmosphere is a suitable place for conducting science experiments. A Balloon based Satellite with IMUs and other sensors could help discover the unknowns of Venus. A lander(KRAGON) will investigate the surface and act as a wagon for the onboard rover(KRAWLER) which will explore further. Developing a proof of concept on Earth would be ideal to prototype and test the systems before arriving on Venus.

Mission Design

The on board flight computer is built with fault tolerant design philosophy. It performs data logging of 10 channel stream at 30 times per second. The software design utilized a state based system where the computer is aware of the flight stages. More features: Killswitch, Apogee Detection, Safety Net.

HAB - High Altitude Balloon

Rocket motors are the next critical element which requried a lot of testing. The thrust bench uses a loadcell to measure the rocket motor's thrust. Later impulse, specific impulse and avgerage force are calculated. The software is designed keeping safety in mind.

KRAGON - Venus Lander

Developing rocket motors is truely the most difficult part of this endevour. This required a thrust bench to get thrust data to iterate rocket motor designs. After over 12 rocket motor builds, the motor design is now safe to use and performs as per design.

KRAWLER - Venus Rover

Data is the most important aspect in rocketry. Data can provide a picture perfect view of what happened during the flight. The on-board flight computer records data at 30 times/sec for 10 channels. This is plenty of data for post trajectory analysis, rocket strain and identifying anamolies.