Team 9 – Rocket Telemetry

CSCE Capstone

Student Site for Individual and Collaborative Activites

Team 9 – Rocket Telemetry

Team Members:

Eli Levy-Mackay
Evan Foley
Kormah Dorko
Rodrigo Mouron
Troy Jones

Description:

When launching a rocket, there needs to be a way to monitor several important metrics of its flight in real time to improve future flights, identify critical flaws and errors, and determine if the launch should be aborted. There also needs to be a way to remotely issue commands to the rocket from the ground in such a case. The goals on the CSCE side of this project are to transmit data to and from the rocket remotely, construct a data format for that information, write onboard routines for gathering data from the sensors into the chosen format, interpreting commands issued from the ground, and to build a comprehensive GUI on the ground side for issuing commands and for visualizing the real-time metrics and related information.

The CSCE team is splitting into two groups. One group works on writing the onboard routines, while the other group works on the GUI for the controller application on the ground. The routines running on the rocket’s processor format and transmit the data collected from the sensors, and handle all automation of the rocket’s stages. The GUI running on the remote device visualizes the transmitted information to provide those on the ground with sufficient information to make well-informed decisions about whether or not to continue to the next stage of the launch or abort if the data indicates something has gone wrong. From there, commands can be issued to either cancel moving to the next stage and enact safety measures like parachutes to slow the rocket and return to the ground, or to move to the next stage if things are correct. If no such issues occur, the ground control device is used only for visualizing the real-time flight data.