Recap of EOSS-42

Red Line Prediction (N0KKZ-3)

Black Line actual flight track (K0ANI)

EOSS-42

LAUNCH DATE: July 16, 2000 (No Rain Date)
LAUNCH TIME: 15:27:44 UTC - 09:27:44 MDT
LAUNCH SITE: The Launch site is at private site and will NOT be open to anyone but the launch site personnel. It is in the vicinity of Byers, Colorado. The prediction details are fudged a little to preserve the privacy of our host but should serve well in planning activities.

PREDICTED vs. ACTUAL TRACK: 

Launch Site - Byers
-----------------------
Launch Point: 39.7032� lat.   -104.2622� long.
Ascent Rate: 1112 feet per minute
Descent Rate: 1230 feet per minute
Altitude: 5400 feet

Predicted Landing Site
-----------------------
Landing Point: 39.82� lat.  -104.1673� long.
Altitude: 5400 feet
Flight Time: 111 Minutes
Bearing: 32.0� True
Range: 9.5 Mi.

Actual Landing Site
-----------------------
Landing Point: 39.8355� lat.  -104.0545� long.
Bearing: 50.3� True
Range: 14.3 Mi.

Difference from Predicted to Actual Landing Site
--------------------------------------------------
Bearing: 79.8� True
Range: 6.1 Mi.

 

FLIGHT EXPERIMENT:

  • Deployment of Mars balloons. The EOSS ATV will be used to monitor and confirm the success of the experiment. Tune in for the excitement.

    This is the second of many planned EOSS flights for the �Mars Micro Balloon Probe� which will place a series of balloons in the Martian atmosphere.  The objective of this flight are to test and develop inflatable gases from compounds that are normally liquids at Standard Temperature and Pressure (STP).   The Mars surface pressure is simulated at 100,000 feet above sea level, thus the experiment on an EOSS balloon.  This experiment will attempt to inflate balloons using various compounds.  This will also permit a test of the deployment canisters required on Mars.

PROJECT INTEGRATOR: EOSS and Pioneer Astronautics, Dean Spieth "Mars Micro Balloon Probe"

FREQUENCIES:

  • Preflight Foxhunt Net 8 pm the night before flight
    • 147.225 MHz Colorado Repeater Association
  • Launch Site:
    • Simplex 146.550 MHz
  • Telemetry:
    • 144.340 MHz APRS, Temps in and out, housekeeping, generic navigation
  • ATV
    • 426.250 MHz NTSC video
  • BEACON
    • 147.555 MHz cw id
  • Foxhunters:
    • 449.450 MHz Rocky Mountain Radio League (pending approval)
    • 146.58 MHz Simplex Field Frequency

Attached (above) are first look results of EOSS42 temperatures, as recorded by a HOBO H08-007-02. Not sure of the cold end outside of the box, but temperatures inside the camcorder box appear to be within camcorder's limits. The HOBO worked from launch to touchdown! We could have acquired a HOBO T/C type T calibrated with NIST certs, but we decided to go the cheap route using the thermistor external on this flight as well as the HOBO's internal sensors.

Indeed, the camcorder worked thru burst at 80,000 feet, and about 6 seconds thereafter, when shock/vibration probably turned off the mechanisms. The battery still indicated 2 hours left after recovery, but the camcorder was very damp. It's a good picture, lots of banging about - we need to bolt our packages together and forget the big black balloon flag. The "flag" still shows lots of turbulence and crosswind even at 80,000 feet, so even though it would be good to qual the nichrome cutter on Chuck's flight (if he'll let us), I think we need over 100,000 feet to get a good Mars balloon experiment.

Sincerely, Dean Spieth

Jack Crabtree [AA0P] was at our launch and took several pictures. Here are a couple.

Inflation underway

Mike, W5VSI, ponders the telemetry

Notes:

Shuttle Generated Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS):

While intermittent, the Shuttle provided good GPS data through most of the flight.

Files:

eos42tlm.zip contains 

  • An APRS Position Log file
  • A Street Atlas 7 overlay file (N0KKZ is the predicted track, K0ANI is the actual track) 
  • A plain text log file.
  • An Excel 2000 spreadsheet of extracted telemetry from the above log file
  • A comma delimited file log without the analysis present in the Excel Spreadsheet - should import into most spread sheet programs.