TU Dresden

I interned at TU Dresden's Institute of Aerospace Engineering.  On my first day, Prof Martin Tajmar received me and very kindly gave me a tour of all of the institute’s labs, focusing on the projects I would help with and on his favourite project: the breakthrough propulsion devices. For the first few weeks, I was switching between projects and helping each project for a few days. One of the highlights was the ACTIVE thrust vectoring project, where we studied the results of a secondary injection downstream of the nozzle of an aerospike engine and its abilities to maneuver a rocket. The other interesting project that I worked on later was the SMART rocket. That is a 750N thrust Liquid rocket powered by ethanol and liquid oxygen and completely built by students. At first, I helped the development of a pyrovalve (a pyrotechnically actuated valve to control the flow of fuel and oxidizer into the combustion chamber). During my last weeks, I worked on the computer model of a new injection plate for the combustion chamber, which would be 3-D printed using Additive Manufacturing.

I became really good friends with the researchers that hosted me at TU Dresden and they already said I can come back next summer, and even for grad school. TU Dresden is a very impressive and welcoming community and I am very glad I had the opportunity to explore it this summer. I am looking forward to what comes next.