When NASA is lofting a “super-pressure balloon” skyward so as to seize astronomical imagery from above 99.5 per cent of the Earth’s environment, you want a method to get loads of information safely again to floor — and researchers figured one of the best ways was with a payload bundle pushed by a Raspberry Pi single-board laptop.
“In April 2023, the superBIT telescope was lifted to the Earth’s stratosphere by a helium-filled super-pressure balloon to accumulate astronomical imaging from above (99.5 per cent of) the Earth’s environment,” the staff answerable for the information restoration venture explains.
This Raspberry Pi Powered “DRS” is designed to outlive days on the fringe of house earlier than delivering its information payload through parachute. (📷: Sirks et al)
“It was launched from New Zealand after which, for 40 days, circumnavigated the globe 5 instances at a latitude 40 to 50 levels south. Hooked up to the telescope had been 4 ‘DRS’ (Knowledge Restoration System) capsules containing 5TB stable state information storage, plus a GNSS [Global Navigation Satellite System] receiver, Iridium transmitter, and parachute. Knowledge from the telescope had been copied to those, and two had been dropped over Argentina.”
The issue the DRS {hardware} was designed to unravel is straightforward: the telescope generated an excessive amount of information to be simply transferred wirelessly, however its descent post-capture was not anticipated to be a mild one — an expectation which proved prescient when the telescope, its balloon deflated, destructively crash-landed on the finish of its mission. The answer: a number of redundant capsules which could be ejected, every with a duplicate of the information and a method to find it post-landing.
The present-generation DRS is constructed round a Raspberry Pi 3 Mannequin B single-board laptop, the staff explains, powered by the principle balloon payload whereas tethered then by two inner 9V lithium batteries when launched. Enclosed in a 3D-printed shell with foam for affect resistance and a small degree of waterproofing, the Raspberry Pi reads information from the telescope over Ethernet and writes it to 5 1TB microSDXC playing cards.
The Raspberry Pi gathers information through Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection and writes it to an array of 5 microSD playing cards. (📷: Sirks et al)
When triggered, a DRS detaches from the balloon and begins its descent slowed by a parachute. The onboard GNSS receiver tracks its location and transmits this to the bottom staff. Whereas the monitoring system on each jettisoned DRS items failed to trace their journey to the bottom, the staff admits, each started transmitting their location post-landing — and triggered an audible sounder on the provider board, making it simpler to seek out them on the bottom.
“We recovered equivalent copies of all the information from each launched DRS capsules and later from the unreleased DRS and the principle information retailer on superBIT (which additionally had barely extra telemetry information),” the staff writes. “Nonetheless, superBIT had been fully destroyed upon touchdown, when its parachute did not detach (maybe due to related thermal points because the DRS capsules; evaluation is ongoing), and it was dragged for 3km by means of related terrain, leaving a path of particles.
The DRS {hardware} (a) is was put in on the superBIT telescope (b) to guard its information within the occasion of a damaging touchdown. (📷: Sirks et al)
“It’s, subsequently, outstanding luck that superBIT’s solid-state laborious drive was later found intact,” the staff concludes. “We didn’t want it as a result of information had already been retrieved from the launched DRS capsules, however having the unique copy enabled us to confirm that no information on the SD Playing cards had been corrupted.”
The staff’s expertise with the DRS system has been printed within the journal Aerospace underneath open-access phrases; the {hardware} design is printed to GitHub underneath the reciprocal Artistic Commons ShareAlike license, whereas a Python instrument for simulating balloon trajectories is on the market underneath the GNU Lesser Normal Public License 3.