T STAR is excited to announce that our TAMU ESET capstone team, DVDT, will be launching their beta version of their MISL stack-compatible communications module on board a high altitude balloon for testing. The launch will take place at Hillsboro, TX on April 9th.
DVDT has been working at an extraordinarily pace to get their communications module finished. They’ve been working diligently for the past seven months in order to get a robust wireless communication link between their module and another receiving module, which has been dubbed “ground station”. They were brainstorming an effective way to test their module when they caught word of an opportunity to launch their module on a high altitude balloon, which they immediately saw its benefits as a test bed and jumped on it.
The launch itself will take place in Hillsboro, TX, and will involve testing the communications module incrementally as it rises. There will be two ground stations: one on the launch site, directly below the balloon; and one here in College Station, TX, which is around 100 miles away from Hillsboro. The goal is to receive constant communication between the communications module and the two ground stations, and to receive most, if not all, packets sent.
If proven successful, the board will then be finalized and DVDT will have finished their ESET capstone design project on a very high note. Not only that, but if proven successful, then T STAR will add the communications board to our comprehensive list of avionics subsystems that we offer within our T STAR Satellite (TSat) cubesat (link to page) package.