Past, present and future

It is already more than one month that the exciting BEXUS 12/13 launch campaign ended. After a period signed by a mix of relax, study and some additional work as well, it is finally time to tell, in brief, the story of the mission and what happened next.

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The BEXUS 13 balloon, hosting ARCADE, was launched on Sept 28th and it lifted smoothly towards the sky over ESRANGE. It was really a great emotion, after a year of hard work, to see ARCADE fly and disappear into the blue.

VIDEO: BEXUS 13 lift-off

Unfortunaltely, at T+15 minutes and after some successful manual commands, ARCADE experienced a connection dropout that prevented any further communication with the ground station. The few operations were all filmed by the onboard high definition camera, that operated properly for the whole flight.

VIDEO: ARCADE Flight Operations

Luckily, the experiment was retrieved in a very good shape from the mechanical and electrical point of view. In particular, the post-flight analysis revealed that the experiment was perfectly working again right after its power-on. During the little available time at ESRANGE it was not possible to recreate the same exact loss of connection occurred during the mission, however it was proved that certain command sequences could severely compromise the stability of the flight computer, making the experiment virtually uncontrollable. Other random software failures were also observed, making it the main suspect for the failure.

At the moment the experiment is on its way back to Italy, where deeper investigation will be made. In any case, it was agreed to proceed with a complete rewrite of the control software, so that ARCADE potentiality could be further exploited by presenting it in Control classes at University of Padova. The first meetings have already taken place and a new preliminary software structure was prepared.

In addition, since ARCADE survived the whole flight and demonstrated to be BEXUS-compliant, it was  recently proposed to ESA as backup experiment for the upcoming flight campaign.
The proposal was ACCEPTED. This means that there is a small chance for a secont flight, which could turn into a certainty if some room becomes available onboard one of the two gondolas throughout the year: yet another another good reason to refurbish and improve the experiment as soon as possible!

For all these reasons… continue to stay tuned, because ARCADE story is not over yet!

Alessandro

Launch Campaign Live Streaming

Dear ARCADE fans,

stay with us during the exciting launch campaign at the ESRANGE  Space Center at http://www.livestream.com/rexusbexus!

Enjoy!

TONS of new pictures!

FINALLY!

After the pre-campaign version of the Student Experiment Document (SED v. 4.0) was finalized and sent, there was eventually the time to update the “Photos” section of the website, that was left behind for quite a long time.

So take a minute and have a look to what the ARCADE Team has been doing during the last months: http://www.experimentarcade.org/wordpress/?page_id=83

You will see how the experiment has been growing day after day, all the tests we have done, the events we have participated to and much much more… The best way to warm up the engines for the Launch Campaign coming up next week!

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Alessandro

En route to ESRANGE

After a last, intense week of work – almost around the clock! – and the Experiment Acceptance Review, ARCADE was finally shipped and it started its long journey to ESRANGE.

The cowntdown to the exciting Launch Campaign has begun!

Alessandro

ARCADE summer nights

Two new great events for the public to meet the ARCADE experiment!

The 20^th of August took place in the beautiful  landscape of  Asiago ‘The dark night’ , a cultural entertainment event about astronomy and art.  During the evening Gabriele (Asiago ) presented to a wide crowd the ARCADE experiment and concept.

Then on last Saturday, ARCADE rose until 1800 msl and was presented, together with the other ESA education activities, during a meeting in a shelter on the Dolomites.

Livia & Gabriele

ARCADE at the Dark Night

ARCADE Dolomites meeting

Mid-August Update

Hello, ARCADE fans!

The IPR was finally held on July 28th-29th and it was a great success! In particular, the level of integration allowed the experts to give us many useful suggestions to improve the reliability of the experiment. Next milestone is the Experiment Acceptance Review (EAR), planned for September 7th just prior to the shipment to ESRANGE.

Since then, many further steps and important enhancements have been done in all the different areas of the project: Mechanics, Electronics, Motion Control, Software, Environmental Sensors and, particularly, Thermal and Vacuum Testing. There may be a very special description of them coming soon, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, enjoy this refreshing picture taken by the flight IP-Cam inside our thermal chamber, after four hours of continuous operation in a -30°C to -50°C environment.

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All the best,
Ale

Working hard for the upcoming IPR

Hi everyone,

giant steps have been done recently in terms of experiment integration! Counting both mechanical and electrical components, roughly  50 % of ARCADE has been assembled, while the test section of the wind tunnel has been prepared. Here is a glimpse of what is going on these days…

…and more is coming for the IPR in a few days. Write you soon!

Fren

SMAV Integration: First Step

First Results From Navigation Test #3

Hi fellows,

while waiting for the final version of the conditioning electronics of the IR receivers to be manufactured, we got some important results from last week navigation test campaign. The data collected during the tests were processed in order to validate the IR sensor reconstruction algorithm for the determination of the distance and yaw rotation of the SMAV relative to the PROXBOX. According to our calculations, the model seems to work; the following pictures show a comparison between the real and theoretical output of each IR receiver, and an example of SMAV distance and rotation reconstruction from the measurements.

However, the uncertainty of the estimates does not address our navigation requirements yet, so a lot of work still awaits us. We look forward to test the final flight components, which will have a better ambient noise rejection, thus allowing a greater accuracy of the estimates.

Hope to post updates soon,

Fren

23/06/11: ARCADE enters MAIT phase

After a month of work following the CDR, Thursday afternoon a cornerstone of the ARCADE project was eventually put in place:  all the 2D mechanical drawings were sent to the manufacturing companies for machining. The electronic and power system layout and PCBs schematics were also completed and they will just need some fine tuning following simulations and tests.

In conclusion, we are proud to announce the official beginning of the C/D Phase (Manufacturing, Assembly, Integration and Test) of the ARCADE Project!

And… stay tuned for updates!

Alessandro