On this day it was time to launch!!! At 11:30 local time we met for the FRR (Flight Readiness Review) where our team lead signed the flight ticket, attested that our experiment is running nominally, and allowed SSC to start launch procedure.
Before the FRR we went on a walk to the visitor centre. Just to clear out our heads and get enough fresh air. The visitor centre was a small exhibition with some information on satellites, rockets and balloons.
At 12:45 LT, right after lunch, we met with all teams at our groundstations, set everything up and waited for the countdown to start. At 11:00 UTC the countdown finally started and launch procedures took their way. For our experiment it was important to warm up long enough so we do not get too cold during flight. At 14:00 LT (T-2:30h) the gondola was mounted to HERCULES and brought on to the balloonpad, where we took the campaign photo with all teams (BEXUS 36 teams included).
We followed the livestream inside, since we weren’t allowed outside. Our experiment was still warming up on external power. The nominal launch was 15:00 UTC, but the countdown was put on hold at T-1:00h. A team on the gondola had major problems, which delayed the launch for about two hours. At around 16:50 UTC the balloon finally got unfold and launch was only a heartbeat away. Right before the launch the door was opened and we could watch the start ourselves and not on the livestream, where it was not possible anymore to see anything due to darkness. The last few minutes started and the tension was really noticeable – everyone went quiet and waited for the balloon to properly build up and take the gondola up in the sky. It felt like everyone was holding their breaths until the balloon finally ascent into the sky.
During the first hour we had some problems: spotty e-link connection. Besides the connection problems we were able to see the Regener-Pfotzer-Maximum during ascent, which was one of our main objectives. Another half an our later we arrived at final altitude and began the floating phase. This was planned to be two hours long, but luckily the balloon was flying over some lakes and villages where it was not possible to cutoff. For us it was perfect, we wanted to fly as long as possible to gather as much data as possible. At three and a half hour floating time we got the information that power could not last long enough to stay on during descent. Luckily our dear friends from the danish team RATATOSK decided to turn of their experiment and shortly after, the other two teams SOBER and OSTRICH did the same. This meant our experiment will have enough power for the descent, however we monitored the voltage decrease closely to be sure we could start our shut-down sequence in time else we had the risk damage of the SD-card.
At around 23:00 UTC we got the information that it’ll be time to cut off at 23:30 UTC. We had the chance of watching the descent in our data since we were still receiving them. 40 minutes later, at 00:10 UTC, we finally lost connection at an altitude of 1.2 km. Everything went nominally, and we set the record of the longest BEXUS flight ever: T+6:48h
Even though it was already pretty late, we celebrated the successful launch with our gondola team members and some of the SSC staff. One thing needs to be mentioned at this point: all the time our team sat together at the groundstation, no one dropped out early to go to sleep or elsewhere – smells like teams spirit. THANK YOU TEAM SETH !!!