ASTRA Cube into the sunset
A key goal of the ASTRA initiative is to reduce the development cycle time of a high altitude atmospheric research platform to mere days from specification (that is, the definition of the space, weight, power and exposure requirements of the instruments to be flown) to test flight.
The ASTRA Cube demonstrator was conceived to test two key rapid prototyping technologies we aim to use towards this goal: additive manufacturing and rapid electronic prototyping. ABS-based 3d printing represented the former here, while for the latter we used .NET Gadgeteer (an open-source toolkit for building small electronic devices using the .NET Micro Framework and Visual Studio/Visual C# Express).
Launched from a MetOffice research facility, during its stratospheric flight lasting just over 4 hours ASTRA 12 reached a peak altitude of just under 35km (~115,000 feet), during which it recorded temperature (dipping to -61C), pressure, humidity and images, as well as key parameters of its trajectory. The imagery captured by the small Gadgeteer camera included the sunset picture shown above, which, incidentally, also depicts the gravity waves picked up three hours earlier by ASTRA 10.
The clip below illustrates the rapid development process which the ASTRA Cube resulted from.
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