Postcards from Near Space

The High Altitude 1U Laboratory (HA1L) had a successful test launch this past week aboard a high altitude balloon in Colorado. HA1L’s mission is to serve as a way to test Michigan’s next core CubeSat bus technology, and is working in direct support of CADRE, the next National Science Foundation sponsored CubeSat to be developed at MXL.

View from HA1L's recent ride
View from HA1L’s recent ride to near space.

The central avionics of CADRE are included on HA1L. It demonstrates CADRE’s capabilities with regard to: software modes, sensor and health checkouts, solar cells charging batteries, UHF commanding and file transfer, beaconing and GPS tracking, watchdog-triggered reset, and post-processed attitude determination.