DRACO employs gaseous-nitrogen head-pressurization on two propellant tanks, providing stable, repeatable injector-inlet pressures. The stand is instrumented with pressure transducers, thermocouples, and load cells to ensure safe testing and to capture the data needed to characterize both the system and the engines.
Following the water flow and hot washing processes, DRACO must be dried utilizing compressed filtered air. Historically, this was achieved by exchanging fittings and adapters, a procedure that is time-consuming and susceptible to assembly errors. To address this, I designed a fixed assembly to support a pneumatic hose, enabling attachment without the need to remove hardware during testing.