Monthly Planning Meeting - 2-Mar-2004, 19:00

CAPNSPACE monthly meeting will be held at the Charles R. Long Squadron HQ building at the Charles Wheeler Airport (formally the Downtown Airport). At our last meeting, we outlined the functions that we wanted the spacecraft command module and payload package to perform, then listed the major systems. The systems are Power Imaging System(s) Tracking/Guidance Telemetry Sensor Array Flight Controller Launch Vehicle Recovery System Airframe Power will provided by Lithium cells through regulators of various voltages. The imaging system will take still pictures and have Slow Scan Television capability Tracking will use GPS and APRS Telemetry will use 2m radio (2) Sensors will include Internal/External Temperature, Barametric pressure and battery voltage. The flight controller will be a microcontroller probably BasicStamp or AtomMicro based. The Launch Vehicle will be a 1200-1500 gram balloon (helium) Recovery System will be a Rocket Systems parachute with a thermal cut-down device and included an RF beacon on 121.725 mhz and an audio beacon The Airframe has not been designed yet. The beginnings of a typical flight profile was outlined and will be continued in the next meeting. The major subsystems will be designated as projects and assigned to design teams. A development, testing, integration and deployment timeline will be started at this meeting. At the last meeting, it was decided that the GPS, APRS and telemetry systems would take priority. Donated equipment so far include: SSTV converter (VCH1) (2) 2meter handheld radios A locator beacon Digital Camera Generic GPS Kantronics KPC3+ TNC Voice IDer chip Simplex repeater There were many good ideas for payload experiments, included UV, ionizing radiation, x-ray and others. Some of these may be included in a separate payload package. I'm sure the list of ideas will get bigger as more people come on board. It was decided that a tentative target date for launch will be the last weekend of July. posted 03-02-2004 | 07:46:26 | article number: 1