A centre of excellence for aerospace systems, engineering consultancy and space systems development, specialising in entry, descent and landing systems for space vehicles.
Vorticity is delighted to welcome Negar and Sophie, our summer interns. Aerospace engineering undergraduates from Selwyn college and Homerton college, University of Cambridge, they’re tackling one of our most challenging projects, the design and build of an altitude test chamber.
Vorticity is proud to be part of NASA’s Dragonfly mission.
The past few years saw most international conferences either moved online or cancelled entirely. Fortunately, 2022 travel restrictions loosened enough for Vorticity’s engineers to present at the 26th ADST conference in Toulouse, the 2nd FAR conference in Heilbronn and the 18th International Planetary Probe Workshop (IPPW) in Santa Clara.
Earlier in 2022, Vorticity completed the ExoMars parachute system qualification tests. We were able to share the multi-year development process, describe the design and show videos of the parachute performance. Further information on ExoMars is available on the ESA website.
Vorticity also presented two ongoing ESA-funded technology developments. Vorticity is leading these R&D studies into flexible thermal protection systems (FTPS) and precision electronic-delay parachute reefing cutters. Both technologies could play an important role in future entry, descent and landing missions, on Earth, Mars and the outer planets.
Finally, we reported the results of a parachute inflation wind tunnel study conducted at the University of Cambridge. Vorticity initiated and supported this Master’s engineering project, in which over 100 subscale parachute inflations were conducted.
For more information on all these projects, please see our publications page.
The ExoMars Dynamics Extraction Testing (DET) campaign at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California has concluded successfully. A total of six dynamic extraction tests were completed, managed by Vorticity.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Roscosmos Space Corporation have decided to postpone the launch of the second ExoMars mission to study the Red Planet to 2022.
Vorticity will be continuing to support the mission through the High Altitude Drop Tests (HADTs) of the parachute system and continued analysis and consultation activities.