TerraMICRO

This is the documentation homepage for TerraMICRO, Mission 1 of the TerraHAB Project.

The documentation here logs our ideas, designs, and decisions through the design process from concept selection to post-flight analysis.

What is TerraHAB?

TerraHAB is a group of engineers who are passionate about aerospace. The group formed in November 2018 as an outlet for alumni members of the student-faculty research group RIT Space Exploration (SPEX) to continue doing space-related engineering projects.

TerraHAB's mission is to do novel things with accesible hardware, share the knowledge gained along the way, and set an example of excellence for similar hobby projects.

Why a High Altitude Balloon?

High Altitude Balloons (HABs) are low-cost, low-risk vehicles that are the perfect platform for conducting small scale atmospheric studies, remote sensing, and other experiments that make use of the "edge of space" conditions found at altitudes in excess of 65,000 feet above sea level. Atmospheric conditions in the stratosphere are fairly well understood insofar as the humidity, temperatures, and pressures that must be weathered by a flight platform. More specifically, ambient temperatures and pressures between 65,000--100,000, feet altitude see extremes of -60C and 0.05 atm respectively.

This opens the door for generic or payload-agnostic HAB platforms designed to carry an experiment or instruments in conditions that approximate space. One such platform is an avionics architecture called µHAB, which is specifically designed to be a robust and all-inclusive avionics package for HAB vehicles. The Technology Readiness Level of µHAB is TRL 2 as of November 2018.

What is TerraMICRO?

TerraMICRO is a high altitude balloon technology demonstration mission. The key objectives of this mission are to validate the µHAB avionics architecture, experiment with core technologies which enable long duration flights, and collect high quality images from high altitudes. As a technology demonstrator, TerraMICRO flight systems designed to be generic in order to support any future missions. TerraHAB has selected long duration flights as a target for future missions, and as such many of the systems beyond the core avionics are building blocks toward this goal. At the time of launch, µHAB should be TRL 3, and upon the successful completion of the TerraMICRO mission this architecture will be TRL 5.