NASA RockSat-X Payload

Overview

Built and deployed software for a scientific payload aboard a RockSat-X sounding rocket launched from NASA Wallops Flight Facility. The payload carried a GoPro camera system and a suite of environmental and inertial sensors designed to capture data during the micro-gravity window at apogee. RockSat-X is a competitive NASA program giving college teams access to real launch infrastructure; the payload rides a suborbital rocket to roughly 100km, experiences a few minutes of micro-gravity, and is recovered after splashdown. The software handled camera triggering, sensor polling, and data logging across the entire flight profile from launch through recovery.

Why It Exists

A team project at Red Rocks Community College competing in the NASA RockSat-X program. The mission was to design, build, and fly a real scientific payload on a NASA sounding rocket and conduct legitimate experiments in a micro-gravity environment.

Features

• ·GoPro camera triggering system synchronized to flight phase (launch, apogee, descent)
• ·Sensor suite software for environmental and inertial data collection during flight
• ·Data logging across the full flight profile from pad through recovery
• ·Micro-gravity experiment execution timed to the apogee window
• ·Flight software designed to operate autonomously with no ground contact during flight
• ·Post-flight data retrieval and analysis pipeline

Tech Stack

Lessons

Space hardware has zero margin for software bugs. You cannot deploy a patch at 100km. Every edge case has to be handled before the rocket leaves the pad.