The primary science mission on the OreSat mission is the Cirrus Flux Camera, a Short Wave Infrared Camera, a central yet untested component of the mission. As an engineer on the Cirrus Flux Camera, I began to conceptualize a test campaign onboard the 2021 High Altitude Student Platform mission in order to test the Cirrus Flux Camera, as well as various other subsystems onboard OreSat. Over the course of multiple months, I worked alongside electrical, mechanical, and firmware engineers at OreSat to integrate existing hardware into a feasible test article to collect data on the Cirrus Flux Camera.

Most information about this campaign can be found in the final science report attached below.

Major thanks to the team at Louisiana State University and NASA BPO for supporting this mission.  

Testing and Integration

Throughout the Summer of 2021, the completed OreSat1B balloon payload completed integration tests at the NASA facility in Palestine, TX. This included mass, volume, and thermal vacuum testing to ensure the proper operation of the OreSat1B payload. 

Following the integration test in mid-July, the OreSat1B payload completed the final flight campaign on September 21st, 2021 in Fort Sumner, NM. The test campaign lasted around 15 hours, providing valuable data on the Cirrus Flux Camera, as well as providing flight heritage to various other OreSat systems (C3, UHF RF systems, and more).

Skills Applied: Hardware Integration, Integration Testing

Final Science Report

Over the course of the year-long test campaign, there were numerous reports written for the Louisiana Space Consortium, as well as the NASA Ballons Programs Office in order to coordinate integration of the payload for the mission. This included completing documentation of power consumption, mass, and volume of the payload.  Various documentation for the operation of UHF radios on our payload was also required. Attached is the final science report I completed after the completion of the test campaign in September 2021.

Skills Applied: Technical Writing, Communication, Documentation