In my previous post, I posted the raw footage recorded from the Nexø II onboard cameras. These videos give an excellent qualitative indication of how well the video downlink worked. I have now also processed the received telemetry data and have a more quantitative idea of the performance.
rocket
Raw footage from the Nexø II rocket cameras
In my previous post, you could watch an edited video from the Nexø II onboard cameras. I have now also made the raw footage available on my YouTube channel.
Video received from the Nexø II rocket cameras
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
Gumstix OVero Fire and Tobi after the crash landing
As I mentioned last week, the Gumstix Overo Fire COM and the Tobi expansion board looked surprisingly well after the crash landing of the failed rocket. Yesterday, I have had a chance to take a closer look at the boards and see what damage has occurred to them. Once I separated the two boards from each other it was obvious that the 70 pin AVX connectors were damaged on both board. The electrical connections on the Gumstix Overo Fire are still OK despite the damaged connector, but the Tobi board got damaged beyond repair (PCB tracks ripped off). Below you will find some close-up photos and a video about the damaged connectors.
Successful flight and a crash landing
Oct 3, 2010 – Danish Space Challenge (DSC) held a Rocket Festival at Borris Sønderland, Denmark, where five rockets built by German and Danish students were launched together with one of DSC’s own rockets. For the first time, the DSC rocket was flying an Arduino Duemilanove based flight computer which was responsible for releasing the parachute. This worked well. The payload in the rocket consisted of the digital video recorder built by yours truly, based on the Gumstix Overo Fire embedded Linux computer that I have been blogging about during the last few weeks, see here.
Ariane 5 rises above ESA’s Kourou tracking station
What a beautiful photo! Ariane 5 V188 with Herschel and Planck on board rises above ESA’s 15m ESTRACK tracking station at Kourou, French Guiana, just after liftoff at 15:12 CEST, 14 May 2009. Click for full size image