Flight #2003-4 "Capstone 2003"
Launch Date: August 7th, 2003
Thursday, August 7th, 2003
Flight 2003-4 was launched from Ray's farm a bit after 3:00 pm
on Thursday, August 7. We flew our tracking payload and cutdown, with
the EE Cubesat teams' solar power experiment hanging well below it to
prevent being shadowed by the balloon. The radar reflector was hung
below that. The stack was lofted by a 2000g latex balloon filled with
one tank of helium. Nozzle lift was about 11.5 pounds, and the
combined payload about 8 pounds. The balloon ascended at a rate of
about 1500 fpm (feet per minute), to a maximum altitude of 77k feet. The
cutdown timer then triggered and the payload descended at a rate of
about 5000 fpm, until the parachute started working at around 20k feet,
at which time it slowed to a more sedate 800 fpm. The packages landed
near Thompson, ND, in a clearing by a sunflower field. Dean, Milly,
John, and Mark were close enough to see it land (Dean just missed getting
a photo of the descent), with Mike, Ryan, and the EEs arriving very
shortly afterward. The payloads were undamaged and easily recovered.
The low maximum altitude was a result of not resetting the
cut-down timer just before launch. The payload team had a problem with
the Motorola M12 GPS engine resetting itself to binary format, which
does not work with the Tiny Trak 3 APRS encoder. After reprogramming
the engine with a laptop, they team decided not to risk another
configuration glitch, and left the system on, thus burning about 20
minutes off the master mission clock. We are discussing a modification
to the payload that would have an arming switch keep the mission clock
in a standby loop until the actual launch, without having to power-down
anything. In the current system, powering down the microcontroller
to reset the clock also resets the GPS, TT3, and radio power.
Kudos to the launch and chase teams for a successful mission,
and thanks to the Space Studies Capstone students who atteneded the
launch and assisted as balloon handlers during filling.
Wednesday, August 6th, 2003
Weather looks good for our fourth flight of 2003. The plan is to launch
from Ray's farm near Larimore, ND, at 3:00 pm on Thursday, August 7th.
We'll be flying the balloon group standard payload (APRS, cut-down), plus
piggy-back the EE Cubesat team's latest project: a solar power generation
system. We may also add an air pump and particle trap from EERC if they
get it ready in time. This will be a standard two-hour flight. Space
Studies Capstone students will also attend the launch and chase, but
have no hardware being flown.
Return to the UND HABP webpage.