Nova 1 launch

[henryhallam]

On Saturday 9th September at 13:13 UTC (two hours before STS-115) the Cambridge University Spaceflight society launched our first Nova balloon.<br /><br />The balloon itself was an 800 gram meteorological balloon and the payload consisted of two completely independent custom-built tracking devices with three communications methods: SMS over a GSM cellphone, high speed radio data and low speed radio Morse code. Both radio transmitters operated at 10mW in the 434MHz licence-exempt band. There was also a 5 megapixel digital camera. A 45" parachute and hot-wire cutdown device were included for the recovery.<br /><br />The main objectives of the launch were to gain experience operating balloon payloads, to test the hardware and firmware of the latest generation tracking device in situ, to test the viability of a radio link as sole communications method for recovery, and to return some good photographs from high altitude.<br /><br />After a tense night of debugging, integration and tests we took the balloon and payload to the launch site at Churchill College, Cambridge. The automatic preflight test found a problem with the GPS reception which was traced to epoxy covering part of the antenna connection and causing an intermittent contact - with that scraped off the electronics all checked out perfectly. <br /><br />The balloon was filled with enough helium to lift the payload and an additional 600g of "excess lift" to encourage a speedy ascent at about 5 meters per second. As a balloon rises it expands and the ascent rate decreases only slightly, so it will keep on rising until it bursts which it did exactly two hours after liftoff at an altitude of 32.2km or 105,600 ft above sea level.<br /><br />The descent was initially rapid in the thin air, reaching a peak descent rate of 45m/s, 100mph. Once the parachute had fully opened and the air thickened the descent rate fell to a terminal velocity of 5.5m/s, 12mph.<br /><br />Nova 1 landed 2 hours, 46 minutes after liftoff in a fiel

 

[qso1]

Outstanding...great pics too. I checked out the 857 pics link. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>

 

[flynn]

Great pic , I wonder if they are planning on getting the Qintiq balloon up again this year. I'll have to look into it later. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>