We’ve recently had the CrawSat III Launch featured in ULToday.com. Special thanks to Dr. Joe Abraham for the article!

Link: http://ultoday.com/node/3374

Gallery Link: http://gallery.ulcape.org/v/Press_Publicity/CrawSatIII_Launched_Mar_2011.jpg.html

Greetings All,

Well the end has finally come for CrawSat III. This past weekend, on Saturday, February 5th, 2011 the CrawSat III High Altitude Weather Balloon Project was successfully launched out of Lake Charles, Louisiana around 12:20 PM, and landed in the Homochitto National Forest in the state of Mississippi nearly three hours later, where it was found stuck in a tree. Through help from a local citizen of the area, the Recovery Teams were able to successfully retrieve the package with very little damage.

- Predicted Flight Path

- Launch Team Preparing to release Balloon

- Launch Team Preparing to release Balloon

- Launch Video

- Photo from bottom camera during flight

- Photo from side camera during flight

- Balloon Package stuck in tree

- Recovery Team and Local Mississippian who helped retrieve package from the tree with package

Also a link to the full Launch Day Gallery may be found here:
http://gallery.ulcape.org/v/CrawSat+3/LaunchDayFeb5th2011/

We would just like to take this moment to thank the following people for their help in making this happen:
CrawSat III development team: Casey Boudreaux, Ethan Olivier, Rizwan Merchant, Dustin Muse, Chase Savoy, Louis Courville

Launch Team: Chase Savoy, Casey Boudreaux, Ethan Olivier, Matthew Dupuis

Ground Station Team: Rizwan Merchant, Nick Pugh, Trey Oliver

Recovery Team 1: Jeremy Guillory, Alex Wehmann, Eric Rohner

Recovery Team 2: Lorenzo Evans, Matthew Triche

Recovery Team 3: Patrick Dellinger, Adam Hebert, Ricky Schexnayder

The locals of Mississippi for helping recover the package

Plane Team: Dustin Muse, Louis Courville

Pilot for Plane: Les Henderson

Photographers: Ashley Isabelle Yelveton, Beth Guillet

The Lake Charles National Weather Station and their Staff

NP Moss Middle Schools Students for making the PearlSats

Northside Highschool for their payload add on to the CrawSat III

The ULL Chemistry Department and Dr. August Gallo for their donation of Liquid Nitrogen for the Cold Test

The ULL Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering Department for providing us lab space and the chance to work on this project

and a very special thanks to Nick Pugh for many a long night of helping, mentoring, teaching us, and pushing us beyond our expectations to reach for the skies and fly.

Sincerely,
Rizwan Merchant
Flight Director
CrawSat III

Greetings Everyone,

I just got off the phone with the Lake Charles Weather Station, and they are saying our winds are looking great for a launch tomorrow. As are the conditions for our plane to join in the recovery efforts out of New Iberia. Our team is planning to meet in the CAPE Lab tomorrow morning between 5:30 am and 6:00 am to begin preparing our vehicles for the day. Around 6:30 am we will be calling the Lake Charles Weather Station for a final update on the weather conditions, and using their data and our own predictions based off the winds make a final decision to fly or not tomorrow. Assuming we can fly tomorrow, Our Lake Charles Team will be leaving the lab at 7:00 am, and should be ready to release the balloon by 8:20 – 8:30 am. We will be sending out recovery teams around 8:00 am. Currently we are predicting a landing in Moureaville, LA. This is variable to change though.

Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=31.1327798358211,-91.8187835927651&spn=1,1&hl=en

Anyone interested in joining us for the day in the lab are more then welcome to join us. I will be sending out another email in the morning once we’ve determined the final decision to fly.

Thanks!

Sincerely,
Rizwan Merchant
Flight Director, CrawSat III

Test conducted at University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Parking Tower to check if the ascent rate functionality on the CrawSat 3 package works.

The end result is a conclusion that this test was a success!

Well its been a while since the last time we gave a status update on the CrawSat 3 development, formerly called Balloon 3, and i’m pretty excited to say we’ve made a lot of progress!

First off, after many long hours in the lab (and some very stressful late nights), I can happily say the code integration is finally showing some great progress. Currently our code is capable of the following:

- displaying gps data (coordinates, altitude, time, and number of satellites connected)
- real time clock (used to keep a running tally on the duration of the flight)
- watch dog time (incase something begins locking up power can be reset, hopefully it won’t be needed!)
- displaying internal and external temperatures to the balloon package
- giving pressure readings
- giving voltage readings on our batteries.
- three cameras able to take up to 20 photos per camera by command from ground (indivisually and all together)
- comm able to transmit successful beacons to ground and receive commands to set a new interval for the beacon to be sent down (choices being 15, 10 and 5 seconds)

(Photo of Ethan working on the camera code)

We’re still working on the integration of a current reading from the onboard fuel gauge, sending commands from ground to trigger a cut down mechanism and another to toggle a siren, and final testing of the cameras. Hoping to get that going soon.

Secondly the structure that will house the electronics is pretty much ready for flight day, minus the final sealing. Below are some photos of the structure:

The structure before being populated,

and after of the entire package. On top you can see a siren and switch to power the electronics.

A close up on our power switch, i’m actually pretty excited that theres a cover for the switch, kind of like in those movies where theres a switch or button behind a glass box.

Close up on the siren mounted on the top of the structure.

View of the inside. Pictured: a placeholder board while the actual board is being used for testing, two of the three cameras secured in their slots aimed out holes fashioned on the side of the box sealed by Plexiglas.

One of the battery holders inside the box.

and here we have the board itself, with the gps unit on the side.

The three cameras outside being tested during the integration process, photos from the test below:

this is a photo we took of one of the CAPE-1 models in the lab from one of the cameras during testing.

Another photo of Casey one of the coders of the GPS subsystem.

and one more of myself, and Chase in the background.

The next photo is actually a compilation of 9 or 10 photos taken by a camera inside the structure to test how the photos looked from behind Plexiglas as the box slowly fell from the table….don’t worry everything is still ok. Nothing broke!

the quality of the photos behind the Plexiglas doesn’t seem too bad.

After this is all done, we’ll be entering an intensive testing period to ensure everything works fine. Launch Date hasn’t been decided yet, as a time table for the testing period hasn’t been determined just yet. So keep an eye out for an update with a launch date and more updates!