written by our collaborators at the Maker Lab
by Samskrith Raghav ’25
The Bellarmine Aerospace Research Group is a small but dedicated club run out of the Maker Lab with a commitment for aerospace projects and ideas. Our founding vision was to put a cubesat into space within four years, and our first step was launching a cubesat on a weather balloon. A cubesat is a miniature satellite commonly used for sensing and communication; we thought it would work perfectly for our program, since it was made for student-led programs to explore aerospace. Under the guidance and supervision of Mr. Dutton and Mr. Stefanescu and the leadership of rising senior Ethan Jones, we began work at the end of last summer, researching, prototyping, testing, and iterating on our cubesat design constantly. For our first flight, we decided only to track location, temperature, and pressure, since we wanted to take smaller steps and iterate quickly; we settled on a simpler cubesat design, containing a thermometer, barometer, GoPro camera, and GPS Tracker. We planned to launch the cubesat on a weather balloon, track it in real time using the GPS, and retrieve it once the balloon popped and the cubesat fell back to Earth. This first flight was a proof of concept, a first step into a larger world of possibilities which we are all excited to enter.
As the cubesat neared completion, we scheduled our balloon flight in early June. We chose to launch at Dinosaur Point, near Hollister, to avoid flying above commonly used airspace such as airports. Using a website, we ran weather simulations to predict the path of the cubesat. We acquired a weather balloon, a parachute, and a tank of hydrogen for the ascent and descent of the cubesat; we used hydrogen to fill the balloon instead of helium because there was a widespread helium shortage, and we believed that the risk posed by hydrogen was minimal in a real flight. As we approached the launch, we were forced to delay it by two weeks due to unfavorable weather.
On June 24th, we arrived at the Maker Lab early in the morning. When we arrived at our launch point, park rangers asked us to move to avoid interfering with ongoing helicopter exercises, so we moved to a similar point slightly further down the road. The satellite, which was made in separate pieces and assembled on site, came together smoothly, though we had to make slight adjustments made in real time. Once we secured the cubesat to the parachute and the balloon, we filled the balloon with hydrogen gas and watched as it slowly rose from the ground. When we finally let go of the cubesat, it took off rapidly; within thirty seconds, all that could be seen was a small speck swaying hesitantly in the wind. We were all ecstatic; the launch was a success. However, as we began to chase after our cubesat, we realized that the GPS tracker was unable to send location data; this was a major blow, since we relied on the GPS tracker to be able to retrieve the cubesat. We followed the cubesat’s predicted flight path and tried to look out for it, but our attempts ended in failure; eventually, we had to turn back and head home.
That might have been the end of the story, had we not miraculously picked up a GPS signal from the cubesat a few days later. It was close enough to a coverage area to send actual location data, and we knew it had landed since its location remained constant. Within a few days, we had retrieved the cubesat, and our first launch was a success. Our cubesat, though slightly battered, was intact, and our camera had taken more than an hour of video from the flight. There were still things to improve: the cubesat landed 20-30 miles away from the predicted landing site, our camera died midway through the flight, and our thermometer and barometer broke off from a slightly rough landing, but the launch was still a success; it opened the doors for the cubesat program, and we plan to follow up this success with many more to come.