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Dragonfly-44

Current Status: Launched; Semi-Success

Report: Due to an issue with the motor or weakness of the airframe material (or both) DF44 fell apart before reaching apogee. Despite falling apart, DF44 still deployed its smoke flare which allowed our team to track and recover the debris.
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Mission

Dragonfly-44's mission is to implement a new R&D Smoke-Flare system aimed to make search and recovery of rockets easier. Additionally, Dragonfly-44 plans to place a camera system near the aft of the rocket with a novel 'clip-in' avionics bay. 

Team Members

Michael Elrod - 2nd year Mechanical Engineering
Jake Halpern - 1st year Mechanical Engineering
Alec Paul - 2nd year Computer Engineering
Jayse Petersen - 1st year Physics
Alex Speyer - 2nd year Mechanical Engineering
​Jonathan Russo - 3rd year Computer Engineering 

Rocket Model

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"There are a thousand things that can happen when you go to light a rocket engine, and only one of them is good."
~ Tom Mueller
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Dragonfly-44

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​What is it?


Dragonfly-44 is an Ultra-Diffuse, Elliptical Galaxy discovered in 2016. Located in the Coma Cluster 330 Million Lightyears away, Dragonfly-44's main draw was that astronomers hypothesized it is mostly made up of dark matter. However as of October 2020, that hypothesis was proven incorrect. If this hypothesis was correct, it would have called into question most (if not all) cosmological theories on galaxy formation. As of now, Dragonfly-44 is an ultra-diffuse galaxy emitting 1% the light compared to that of the Milky Way.
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Additional Documents

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Contact

launchinitiative@rit.edu
RIT Launch Initiative
The Construct, INS 73-4190
73 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623

Meetings & Events

Events Calendar

All Team Meeting:
Saturday - 11 a.m.
Institute Hall (INS) 73-1180

 
Photo used under Creative Commons from NASA Hubble
  • Home
  • About
  • Subteams
    • IREC
    • Avionics
    • Solid Propulsion
    • Space Race
    • L1 Program
  • Projects
    • Project Archive >
      • Water Bearer
      • Lazarus 1
      • Third Time's The Charm
      • Aethera
      • Space Force
      • XSpace
      • Dragonfly-44
      • Blackout
      • S.P.I.C.A.
    • VOID
    • Ground Station
    • Tuatara
  • References
    • Wiki
    • Publications
    • Trainings
  • Sponsors
    • JLCPCB