Prox-0.3

Georgia Institute of TechnologyKiichiro DeLuca

Richard ZappullaIan Chen

Matt Uhlman

1

Mission Overview:

• System Level Integration of Critical Subsystems

• Opportunity to integrate subsystems that are critical to satellite survival: Command and Data Handling, Electrical Power, and Thermal Control.

• Flight Testing of Critical Subsystem Components

• Power Management and Distribution Board

• Power MOSFETs and Thermistors

• Image Acquisition/Storage and On-board Processing

• Visible image acquisition through web camera

• Visible image storage on flash storage

• OpenCV library for on-board image processing 2

Expected Results:

• Verification of nominal subsystem-subsystem interaction through log of command out and telemetry in to the Flight Compute Element

• Thermistor Temperature

• Heater ON/OFF

• PMAD Board Voltage

• Image acquisition at altitude

• Verification of camera link to Flight Compute Element

• PR Value!

• Verification of on-board image processing routine on Flight Compute Element

3

Actual Results:

• Flight Recap:

• Power initiated prior to flight string integration

• Anxiously tracking and waiting for Prox-0.3 retrieval since data logged on-board

• Results:

• Structure/on-board electronics in tact

• Data (images/telemetry log) not present on SD card

• Average battery cell voltage at 8V compared to nominal 9V thermal control successful? 4

Preliminary Failure Analysis:

• BeagleBoard experienced drops in voltage which resulted in second-stage boot-loader failure and system restarts.

• Primary cause of failure: During image acquisition, board was accessing the USB bus and drawing too much current.

• This problem was replicated after flight to confirm predicted reasons of failure.

• Data collection failure due to compiling errors of UART communication scripts.

• Primary cause of failure: Limited amount of development time with actual hardware.

5

Lessons Learned:

• System level hardware/software integration at early phase of development critical to mission success

• Allow sufficient time to connect subsystems and test everything together.

• Shift from traditional aerospace design philosophy to concurrent engineering needed

• Risk associated with having all monitoring of critical telemetry reside on the central flight computer

• Bring backup hardware! 6

Conclusions and Actions:

• While data was not retrieved during flight, ground tests showed all of the functionality in the mission overview

• Moreover, many valuable lessons learned related to system integration and testing came out of the process up to and during the balloonsat flight

• Success in the lessons learned

7

Action Items and Impact to Prox-1:

• Action Items to be fed back to NS-7

• Redesign and rapid build of the power management and distribution board

• Investigate the possibility of monitoring critical telemetry on subsystem microcontrollers

• Integrate components and subsystems early in the I&T phase

• Shift our team’s approach to prototype development

8