G-Hardened Electromagnetic Launch Payload

Rockets spend most of their mass accelerating their own propellant. Electromagnetic launch removes that penalty by doing the accelerating on the ground, but the cost lands squarely on the payload: everything on board has to absorb an acceleration profile far past what conventional spaceflight hardware is qualified for, then operate normally once it's in orbit. This project was a collaboration between Engineering Solutions @ Berkeley (ESB) and Auriga Space, a startup developing the next generation of electromagnetic launch technology. As an EE consultant on a seven-person mechanical and electrical team, I helped design a novel payload around the launcher's environmental envelope, driven by G-hardening and thermal management. The mechanical effort centered on combined structural and thermal loading: simulating the payload under launch acceleration, bolt analysis at the critical joints, and quantifying the thermal strain accumulated over orbital temperature cycling. On the EECS side, we built a fully independent power and telemetry system designed to survive those same mechanical loads, involving solar power, radio, sensors, and GNSS. We designed the avionics in KiCad, assembled and brought up the boards with a reflow oven and bench instruments, wrote the firmware, and integrated with the mechanical team, all within 12 weeks. Most details of this project are under NDA, along with all imagery. Org: ESB x Auriga Space

Tags