Nova 8 / HAPS-D, Last minute bolt-on - sunrise from altitude Options

[djellison]

"We're launching tomorrow morning' says Ed.
"Shame I can't make it, I have to be at work" says I.
"At 3 am" says Ed
"Hmmm" says I

Long story short - hopefully a reflight of the HAPS1 A560 tomorrow - at dawn - with recovery in time for me to get back to Leicester in time for work. Ed will fill you in on the rest of the payload. He's an engineer - I'm just a temperamental artist.

Obviously - anyone with half a brain will be fast asleep, so may not be any/many live updates. Possibly live tracking, maybe uStream while we're setting up.

The real problem is the toxicology involved in staying up all night with caffeine based beverages.


(For people just finding this thread...

Movies from the Nova 8 camera

http://vimeo.com/1628664 Ascent Part 1
http://vimeo.com/1628493 Ascent Part 2
http://vimeo.com/1628497 Ascent Part 3
http://vimeo.com/1628414 Descent


Movies from the HAPS-D camera

http://vimeo.com/1628947 Ascent Part 1
http://vimeo.com/1628809 Ascent Part 2
http://vimeo.com/1628810 Ascent Part 3
http://vimeo.com/1626812 Descent


http://vimeo.com/1628991 All of the still images at 6fps from the HAPS-D camera
http://vimeo.com/1629086 All of the still images at 6fps from the Nova 8 camera
Download the MOV from bottom right on these - and you can essentially scrub your way thru all the images at quite a reasonable resolution.

[Edward Moore]

A few details -

The payload is based around a big polystyrene (styrofoam) box, with various layers of space blanket to keep everything inside warm(ish). The payload has been built in the last couple of days built by everyone except me - I have a summer job (ExoMars EDLS with Vorticity Systems - I'm so glad I picked engineering as a career!) whereas the other guys have managed to stay in Cambridge over the summer to work on stuff fulltime.

We'll be flying 4 cameras in total - 2 'premiers' (£5 ebay specials) which we've used since the beginning because they're dirt cheap, but a bit rubbish. However cheapness > quality after we enthusiastically bought expensive cameras once (to return to Jessops after the flight) only to have a pyrotechnic cutdown fail, and so they went somewhere into the North Sea. The Premiers will be on 'sponsor' duties - http://spacefellowship.com/News/?p=6152

We then have the HAPS A560 and our own one. These won't have sponsor logos in the way. Our one will be horizontally mounted and will have a UV filter, Doug is (I think?) mounting his in portrait with a 10 degree downward slope - as he and James Canvin discussed to optimise stitching.

The avionics comes from the 'Badger Board' that Fergus and I designed - http://flickr.com/photos/25036435@N00/2501...in/photostream/ and http://flickr.com/photos/25036435@N00/2501...in/photostream/

It's an ARM-based microcontroller, with gps, gsm, radio, some sensors (including 3 axis accelerometer, though I can't guarantee we'll have that for tomorrow, but if we do, we'll of course put the data files up), general io to activate cameras and pyro-links and so on.

The all-up weight of the payload will be about 1kg. It'll be hoisted by a 1.5 kg balloon - the balloons are named according to the weight of the latex they're made from. It's a larger balloon than was used on HAPS-1, so it might get a little higher. Our altitude record is 33.281km for reference (not that the gps is good enough for 1m accuracy in altitude). Parachute will be whatever is lying around. I'm about to start construction of a ring-slot parachute, but it's going to be a bit of a pig to make with just mum's sewing machine, and it's sized for the new payload system we're building, so we will probably still have the cork-screwing on the way down that we saw with HAPS-1.

Based on the GFS forecast, we're looking at a flight profile that is roughly like this (open in Google earth): http://www.cuspaceflight.co.uk/nova8_prediction.kml Though that assumes a higher drag descent than will be the case, so the drift during descent should be lower. Note - constant ascent rate. Once we punch through the jetstream we pretty much go straight up.

With luck, you will be able to track it live from here - http://spacenear.us/tracker You'll see there a twitter box for random updates from us in the run-up, and an embedded irc applet. It points to #highaltitude99 on FreeNode (if you prefer your own client), and it will have a bot in it which prints the raw telemetry string every 10 seconds. That just gives the basics - lat long alt, time since last reset, number of gps sats etc. That's what we use to track it down. the room #highaltitude is the main room for general ballooney chit-chat. If you want to have a go at this yourself, that's the place! There's also a uStream live webcam which Doug will sort out I think - it'll probably just be us preparing in the college Bar. If we're in wireless range outside, we'll try and get launch too, though it'll be dark.

The radio is 10mW 434Mhz. 'Why only 1/3rd the power of an LED?', you ask. Well, we are legally limited to that by Ofcom. They are a bit jumpy. That said, we have tracked stuff well out to the North Sea (that fatefull second mission) and it was several hundred kilometres away when we gave up listening and went to the pub. It was still receiving absolutely fine. So, it you're in the UK or Holland/Calais/anywhere around there and are of an amateur radio persuasion, you can listen in. Here are the details: 434.650Mhz, 50 baud, 425 Hz shift reversed ascii-7 RTTY. Callsign 'Badger' if I remember correctly. We can pick it up with a whip from at least 200km away, and if you have a yagi, the only limit will be Line of Site.

I think that's all the basics. Let's hope we get some pics of the sun creeping over the curvature of the earth!

Ed

EDIT: Forgot to say, the actual launch time will be calculated so that it first sees the sun at about 25km (sunrise is earlier up there than on the ground for a given lat/long, obviously).