Near Space Project

Project Summary

Following an excellent talk by Ed Moore, M0TEK at the 2009 RSGB Convention, discussions took place between several Warrington ARC members wishing to undertake a similar mission to his. A number of variations were proposed to expand the project scope so that it would encompass strong Amateur Radio and Education elements.

And so after several extra large glasses of ice-filled Coca Cola, Mike G4VSS, Paul G1DVA and Dave G7SKR declared the project was officially born as Warrington Amateur Radio Club's Near Space Project. Its mission is to launch a small radio and educational payload to the edge of space whilst tracking its altitude, speed and location in real time. An on-board camera will take pictures of the journey. The flight won't last forever so a means of locating and recovering the payload is also needed after it lands.

The project will use a helium filled weather balloon to lift the payload, the weight of which has to be carefully tailored to the balloon's lifting capacity. The expected cold temperature (-50°C to -60°C) means that any electronics in the payload must be kept warm.

During the flight, on board sensors will monitor and log the internal and external temperatures; location information will be provided by a GPS module; log time keeping is done by an onboard RTC (real time clock); two cameras will take and store pictures at regular intervals and on triggered events; a telemetry downlink will be provided for real-time tracking using APRS formatted AX.25 (packet radio) frames feeding a low-power UHF transmitter in the 70cms band; and a GSM phone module will provide land-based feedback of its location to enable recovery of the payload.

The flight electronics are driven by a central "flight computer" based on a PIC microcontroller. The hardware and software is being designed by Paul G1DVA and brings together a number of off-the-shelf modules with custom written software. The project is continuously evolving and its block diagram is shown below.


The altitude is expected to reach in excess of 18km (60,000 feet) before the balloon bursts. Recovery of the payload is facilitated by firing a balloon release charge to separate any burst balloon fragments and cord from the main payload before deploying a parachute for its decent back to earth.

Just before touch-down, the GSM module sends a SMS message containing its location to a pre-programmed mobile phone just in case the landing is a little bit heavier than anticipated. Once on the ground, the telemetry transmitter will continue to send its APRS beacon messages to aid ground based location and recovery.

Several local schools have already expressed interest in the educational and scientific elements of the project for use in their classes. There are also several fun elements that we hope to include too. The first test flight is expected to be in Spring 2010 and this page will be updated regularly as the project progresses.