Pegasus VI - High Altitude Balloon Launch Options

[james_coxon]

Hey Everyone,
After the massive interest in the HAPS-1/2 balloon launches I thought you lot would be interested to know that we are planning to launch this Sunday (02/11/08) at approximately 11.00am GMT from Cambridge,UK. The payload is a little different to HAPS-1 as instead of the camera saving the pictures to its memory, the flight computer downloads them and then transmits them using the SSTV protocol so we should be able to receive images inflight (though pretty low quality compared to the normal pictures). This concept was meant to be tested on HAPS-1 but wasn't working on the day (like most of the flight computer!).

So the payload hardware consists of:

Gumstix Verdex + GPSstix (Ublox 4 GPS)
GM862 GSM module
Canon Powershot A60
Radiometrix NTX2 434.075MHz at 10mW

Pictures on Flickr
More info can be found on Pegasus HAB Project

Tracking will mainly be done by radio (RTTY at 300baud, ASCII-8, 200Hz shift) and also the radio will transmit the sstv images but as a back up the GSM module will send SMSs containing the gps coordinates on landing.

Online tracking (with pictures) will be at spacenear.us and there will be discussions concerning the flight etc on #highaltitude99 on freenode.

[jamescanvin]

Hooray!

The payload is a little different to HAPS-1 as instead of the camera saving the pictures to its memory, the flight computer downloads them and then transmits them using the SSTV protocol so we should be able to receive images inflight (though pretty low quality compared to the normal pictures).

So are the pictures not saved on board at all?

[james_coxon]

Yeah, sadly the camera doesn't save the images, I'm using the remote capture function of some of the powershots, by sending the right commands to the camera it'll take the picture and then immediately transfer it over usb. The only option would be add some memory to the gumstix but that would require a usb hub and usb memory stick - perhaps something for a future flight if this all goes well. This remote capture function is also only present on the older Powershot models so the quality isn't as good as the cameras that were used on HAPS-1/2.

James

[djellison]

Looks like there was a flight - not sure they've had much luck with the tracking though - contradicting numbers on an image, and on the tracker info on the right. Back to zero altitude somewhere NE of Cambridge - The wyoming predict runs about 20nm NE of the launch site for impact.

Doug

[james_coxon]

Yup, there was a launch and the payload was recovered - due to a mistake in the shift for RTTY it was very difficult to get valid data strings, however on landing the GSM module kicked in as a planed and SMS'd the position. It therefore meant it was impossible to do online tracking and so upload images - something thats easily fixed so Pegasus VI will fly again soon!

Max altitude was 31,394M
Pictures received on Flickr
Log file here

Will keep everyone updated.

James

Edit: Just added a kml - here

[ugordan]

Pictures received on Flickr

Wow, shades of unmanned probes from the '60s.

Those pics are cool in a weird (geeky?) kind of way!