During the last year or two, you may have heard me talk about rocketcam or rocket-cameras, teasing with pictures but without providing too many technical details. Actually, it all started with a cryptic tweet I posted on October 23, 2016:
I have a plan. pic.twitter.com/pboLyN4oK6
— Alexandru Csete (@csete) October 23, 2016
I apologize for the lack of details during all this time, but it has been some super busy years. In between my full-time job, several freelance jobs, maintaining gpredict and gqrx, I have been working on a video downlink system for the Copenhagen Suborbitals Nexø II rocket.
The rocket flight took place on August 4th, 2018, and the video downlink system performed beyond my expectations. We had full video coverage from lift-off till splash-down with only momentary dropouts that the system could quickly recover from.
The video below shows the video feed from the three rocket cameras, as received by the “ground station” on the mission control ship Bolette Munkholm:
I hope you enjoyed this amazing first-person view from the flight.
Once the Nexø II mission is concluded with data analysis and official debriefing, I will be publishing technical details about the video downlink system. Until then, you can watch this video interview we recorded in April 2017. I will also be presenting the system at the Open Source CubeSat Workshop in September and the Amsat UK colloquium in October.
Stay tuned!