1. Pima Community College ASCEND Team Spring 2010

2. PCC ASCEND TEAM ASCEND Spring 2010 Team – James Gardner – Andy Gee – Chris Martinez – Chris Pecora Team Lead: Stacy Harrison Faculty – Dr. Denise Meeks – Mike Sampogna

3. Payload Mission This is the first payload design for 4 new team members. Our goal was to build a basic payload that would be capable of taking full motion video of the entire flight. Additional instrumentation on-board is a HOBO Micro Station Logger with temperature and pressure sensors. We have built a resistance heater to aid in keeping the camera and timing circuit warm.

4. Payload Design Payload constructed out of ¼ in. foam board. We tested our payload in a team built environmental chamber capable of temperatures -50 degrees C. Total payload weight = 1.176 kg (2.6 lbs) Major components are secured inside the payload through the use of “compartments”. Video will be taken with a Flip Video Ultra HD camera Lithium batteries used in both the video camera and the HOBO station.

5. Flip Video Recorder 120 min. Ultra HD Specs inserted here Weight: 149 gm. Resolution: 1280 x 720 p Frame Rate: 30 fps Video Bitrate: 9.0 Mbps File Format: Saves as MP4 Run Time: 2 hr Internal Memory: 8GB Zoom: 2x digital Battery Life: up to 6.5 hr (with AA Lithium) But can it work at -55 0 C ???

6. Videos taken with Flip Video Ultra HD courtesy of Bill Brown WB8ELK High Altitude Research Corp Huntsville, AL We contacted Flip Video tech support and they said the camera would not work at temps below 0 0 C. We then wrote to Bill Brown and asked for comments…the videos speak for themselves!!!

7. Thermal Issues Based on the two videos it appears as though we should not worry about low temps at altitude????????????????? However, we opted to provide some form of heating via the resistance heater design that can be found in the Balloon SAT handbook. Better safe than sorry!!!

8. Heater for payload 3 resistors 3 - 9 volt Lithium batteries

9. HOBO Logger Specs: Operating Range: -40 to 70 C Sensor Inputs: Up to four Comm: 3.5 mm Serial port Memory: 512K nonvolatile flash Logging interval: 1 second to 18 hours Start Modes: Immediate, push button, or delayed

10. PCC Payload Spring 2010

11. 7/3/201611 Environmental Testing Chamber Environmental Testing Chamber

12. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the following people and organizations for their help with our first payload design and balloon launch: – Amy Gladwin – Peter Kozak – Stacy Harrison – ASCEND – Arizona Space Grant Program