Back to work in the 2020 spring semester. We kicked off the year with inventory management. We also got our new engine hold down manufactured and assembled. This hold down is ready for whatever anomaly the engine may throw it's way!

With more major hardware machined and assembled and everything better organized, we once again began integration testing weekends.  Using low pressure nitrogen flows, different fluid panels and operations were checked out and necessary changes were made. Additionally, the team submitted 6 papers to the AIAA Region II Student Conference. 

Of course, March 2020 will be remembered in  more ways than one. We were able to complete one more weekend of low pressure integration testing and an injector water flow with the static fire test stand before the university closed for the COVID-19 outbreak. While we were heartbroken to be separated from the test stand, health and safety come first.

April didn't exactly go the way of the Gaant charts, but we made the best of the situation. The team transitioned to remote meetings, which were used to to boost team morale and teach valuable programming skills to newer team members. Things may look a little different, but the Tartarus team continues on. 

May kicks off Tartarus Summer Camp, a series of remote meetings and lectures designed to propel the team into the Fall semester. We're excited for a fun remote summer, but can't wait to get back to hardware!

Summer camp is in full swing with weekly meetings and lectures to train up the workforce. Different subject areas and tasks have been taken on as the team adapts to the telework environment and plans for the next semester of progress. 

Summer camp is beginning to come to a close, and the team becomes more familiar with the virtual environment. The different subject matters researched by the team are showing results, and the total knowledge level of the team is steadily increasing. Planning has begun in its most infantile state, and the team is looking optimistically towards the coming semester.

Summer camp has wrapped up, and the fall semester at UAH has begun. The team is off to a strong start, with high participation and motivated members. With our hands back on the hardware, the team is once again excited at the prospect of a static firing test. During this month abstracts were submitted to the Von Braun Symposium, and the team's newly graduated members officially bid the project farewell.

Abstracts are written for the Von Braun Symposium, but COVID restrictions have slowed the team down. Progress with hardware is still progressing steadily, but with less time allowed in the machine shop things are not going as quickly as planned.  However, solid changes to the standard operating procedures for testing and fluid system have been made.

The team finally has its first fully successful low pressure integration test of the semester, and many bugs are ironed out of the standard operating procedure. Parts have been ordered to facilitate optimizations of the fluid system, and overall progress is being made.

Finally some good news! We have successfully controlled every valve and instrument on the system remotely from a safe distance. This will allow for the team to be a safe distance of more than 100 yards from the test setup when hot fire occurs. This month's focus lied on improving the control and electrical systems on the test stand, and we had a lot of success. However, the date for the first hot fire test of the engine had to be pushed back to next semester. The system was simply not ready for such a complex test when a high pressure test had not even been conducted.

As the semester and 2020 wraps up so does Tartarus, with a lot of lessons learned. Overall in 2020 we did not achieve many long term goals like a hot fire test, but the team did gain a lot of experience and learned a lot from its failures. Using this experience we plan to come back stronger than ever in 2021. 💪