NASA Floating Dragon

The Purdue DragonFly represented Purdue University's entry into NASA's FLOATing DRAGON (Formulate, Lift, Observe, And Testing; Data Recovery And Guided On-board Node) competition. In this national competition, participating teams were challenged with designing a data vault recovery system for retrieving data vaults from NASA's high-altitude weather balloons. Notably, Purdue's DragonFly stood out, earning a place among the top 6 teams. As a recognition of this achievement, the team was awarded a $5000 stipend to manufacture and test the glider. The testing took place in August 2023, deploying the glider from a balloon in Fort Sumner. 

Software skills: SolidWorks, XFLR5, MATLAB, Ansys (Fluent), SolidWorks (FEA)

Hard skills: 3D Printing, Foam Cutting, Drilling, Sawing and Sanding, Wind Tunnel Testing