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Table of Contents
ALIEN - ALtitude Imaging Entering Near-space
This is a project run by GCSE students from Reading School, in Reading, UK. The objective of our first flight (ALIEN-1) is to reach an altitude of approximately 30km (~100,000ft) and take photographs of the Earth/space horizon. We will also include two environmental temperature sensors: one external, one internal. Communication will be by one-way radio downlink, GPS telemetry only.
For day to day happenings, visit our project blog. All of the project's code is hosted under version control at Google Code.
Team
- Alexander Breton
- Simrun Basuita
- Daniel Richman
Hardware
- Kaymont Sounding Balloon (probably 1200g)
- Random Solutions (£55 for 1200g)
- Parachute and lines
- From Random Solutions (same as balloon supplier)
- Polypropylene preferred over nylon
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- Kindly donated by Radiometrix :)
- Need to make an antenna, should be pretty easy - 1/4 wave ground plane
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- Module, antenna and cable donated by Electrobee
- Confirmed as working well.
- Need female cable from Samtec to connect to the circuitry - Done
- Canon Powershot A80
- Alex owns
- Need to hack the shutter button (Done - Daniel)
- 2GB CompactFlash card
- Power
- Lithium Iron DiSulfide (Li/FeS2)
- 96 (yes, 96!) have been donated by Energizer!
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- Will use Daniel's
- GSM
- Simrun has a Sony Ericsson w800i (aka. w800, w800c)
- Very similar to the k750i
- Need to hack a DCU-60 cable
- Baud rate is 9600
- SMS tests from the PC have proved successful - Simrun
- A C implementation for creating SMS PDU octets has been completed - Daniel
- Helium
- Might be provided by CU Spaceflight.
- Temperature sensors
- Internal and External
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- Got two free 'samples'
- Beacon sounds (recovery aid)
- Some sort of relatively loud buzzer/beeper
- Payload container - Materials
- Have obtained a polystyrene box from a supermarket
- 41cm long, 27cm wide, 15cm high
- 2cm thick
Launch
We plan on launching the balloon sometime in May. Launch site will most probably be Cambridge University (with help from the spaceflight club there). However, all decisions are obviously dependent on the weather.