Sorry I’m late on this update, but the rocket with our payload flew on May 4. It was a perfect flight, and I got the payload back the next day. In perfect condition.
I had a great time parading around the engineering department of NMSU, showing off the payload to everyone. Everyone was impressed, including the department head, Dr. Burton. He wants the data.
The way the payload worked was to begin recording data as soon as it was turned on, and to continue recording until it’s turned off. Each time it’s turned on, a new data file gets created. It stores about one megabyte of data per minute, and the flight lasts about 15 minutes. So I expected to see one new data file on the storage card, and I expected it to be 15 megabytes or larger.
And that’s exactly what I saw when I stuck the memory card into the reader. One new file, 17.5 megabytes.
A quick pass through the file shows that the information is readable and appears to be the right information, in the right order. Over 300,000 individual readings were taken, and not one of them failed the checksum test (indicating that every record had all its bits recorded correctly with no errors).
Let’s pause for a moment and appreciate the enormity of this achievement. A lot of hard work by a lot of people, and something me and my friends built got flown into space, did its job, came back with the data, and is ready to fly again. I am awed and humbled. Also hooked. I really want to do this again.
The format of the data file is pretty crude. With the mad scramble to get the payload delivered on time, I gave up any pretense of calculating anything and just stuffed the raw sensor readings into the file, to be sorted out later. Well, it’s now “later”, and I’m working on a program to read the data file.
