Missions

Mission Essentials

So what really goes into a mission? Well, from our experience, we have discovered there is much more involved than we originally thought. We have come a long way in our understanding of mission planning. The first and most important aspect of planning a quality mission is to establish a structure that will make planning and execution very effective. This means having enough personnel to conduct the mission, as well as all the tools and resources to make it possible.

Second and most importantly, we need to have a purpose for the mission. In our case, our atmospheric experiments drive our mission requirements. We brainstorm interesting facts about what we have learned from previous flights and often try to expand on them, re-validate them or simply come up with interesting hypotheses we wish to test.

Thirdly, and critical to the success of the mission, is to develop a number of subsystems necessary to support the mission requirements. Our subsystems include balloon-navigation, on-board data handling, tracking and communications, multi-media, power and thermal subsystems. A considerable amount of time is spent configuring, testing and documenting all systems.

The flight plan must also be established to ensure our payload reaches its intended altitude and azimuth to satisfy the mission requirements. Payload weight, neck lift, ascension rate and balloon size/type will determine the amount of helium required to obtain the desired burst altitude. Weather conditions must also be considered when determining launch site. Recovery distance vary dramatically depending up on the time of year and associated wind speed.

The launch itself could never occur without proper approval from the regional aviation authority. Here in Kaiserslautern we must obtain the German Genehmigung from the LandesBetrieb Mobilität Rheinland-Pfalz. Required information for the Genehmigung include HAB insurance, authorized launch site, payload under 4kg, plus a range of specific payload details.

Finally and the most interesting aspect of the mission is the mission analysis and synthesis. This is the phase in which we recover all of the raw data required to support our individual science experiments, as well as supply us with new and exciting footage of the journey.