Ricardo Figueroa Rodriguez

IONIC-S is a cubesat team dedicated to researching, in low Earth orbit, the Geo-Magnetic effects on a small craft as well as doing an autonomous payload deployment and retrieval. As lead of Astrodynamics and Propulsion, my role was to design an orbit that would comply with all mission objectives as well as meet and provide access, communication, and thermal data for the craft as well as other information neeed via Ansys AGI STK.

* Part of University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez team dedicated to competing in the NASA RASC-AL project in designing a lunar sustainment mission. Currently researching and designing cis-lunar trajectories and parking orbits for Earth and the Moon.

* Loxodon’s main goal is to research, design, manufacture, and test a 500 pound-force liquid rocket engine. Thus, creating the first liquid rocket engine in Puerto Rico. *Working on the Automation Systems division where we are working on composing and laying the ground work for extracting information such as pressure and flow rate. Also working on programming the countdown measures for said engine.

*Performed simulations and calculations for orbital transfer maneuvers, trajectory optimization, and launch window analysis from Earth to Mars. * Developed an in depth understanding of orbital mechanics and its application to the space environment. * Presented project in SpaceVision 2023