ICSPACE25 was launched from Felixstowe on 30 April 2021 by Steve Randall(Many Thanks). It was a twin balloon launch, both prestretched to 0.16 cubic meters over the course of 28 hours at ~0.6 psi. It floated at 10.8 km altitude, lower than expected. It uses the same tracker design as Read more…
ICSPACE24 was launched at 09:45 UTC on 22/1/2021 from Felixstowe by Steve Randall(many thanks). It was a tracker powered by smaller and lighter solar cells. This brought down the weight of tracker to 4.6 grams. The balloon was changed to a Qualatex 36 inch balloon. Free lift was set to Read more…
ICSPACE23 was launched at 12:00h UTC on 17/12/2020 from Felixstowe, UK. It is once again a LoRaWAN tracker connected to The Things Network. Day 1 Here is the launch video, filmed by Steve Randall. Many thanks to Steve for launching it. At the end of the day, the balloon reached Read more…
ICSPACE22 was launched Monday 19 October 2020 with a 6.0g tracker under a party balloon filled with pure hydrogen. The tracker is solar powered and transmits LoRaWAN packets of its position to gateways connected to The Things Network. The balloon made an appearance over Japan 6 days later, and Canada Read more…
This article describes two high altitude balloon flights in August/September 2020. ICSPACE20 was launched on 22 August 2020 and was last heard over Denmark. ICSPACE21, launched on 4 September 2020, was last heard over Japan six days later, floating at 10400m altitude. This is our longest flight in terms of Read more…
The ICSS balloon group launched ICSPACE19 from Fryent Country park on 17/3/2020. This launch comes more than a month since the last launch and is perhaps the most tested tracker we have launched. The LoRa radio transmitted using Spreading Factor 8 and 125khz bandwidth. We have split the world into Read more…
The High altitude ballooning group launched 2 trackers on Friday 31 Jan 2020 from Fryent Country park. ICSPACE16 was last seen over Austria while ICSPACE17 landed on a hill in Slovakia and was transmitting until it ran out of battery. ICSPACE16 was our first pure solar tracker, with 6 solar Read more…
The long awaited launch of the our next generation balloon track has come. This new tracker integrates the Murata CMWX1ZZABZ-078 LoRa radio module, an Ublox GPS, TE connectivity MS5607 temperature/pressure sensor, AA lithium battery and boost coverter. We launched the balloon from Fryent Country Park, London in the afternoon of Read more…
The cube satellite group designed and built a 137 Mhz double crossed dipole antenna to receive data from orbiting NOAA statelites. This probably the first time the Imperial College Space Society has communicated with an orbiting satellite, albeit only one way. We built the antenna according to this excellent tutorial Read more…
The high powered rocket designed to go supersonic has been under development for some time now at the Imperial College Space Society. Recently, we have been designing and building the flight computer. We have settled on a single stage minimum diameter rocket(either 38mm or 54mm diameter rocket that will take Read more…