CaNoRock 4 is a success

Well, I'm sitting here in Oslo in the budget hotel Gardermoen, and the past few days have gone by so very fast. I didn't even have time to properly write in this journal.

Let's see, where did I last leave you all hanging? Oh yes -> SWIMMING IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN!
Damn that's cold, but now I have an official looking certificate from Andoya Rocket Range stating my pure manliness and bravery. :)



I have an error to correct: The name of the rocket was in fact:
"BAKON PASTE", which stands for:
"Ballistisk Aeronautisk Kanadisk Og Norsk Professional Atmospheric Space Telemetry Experiment"
Phew... That's a mouthful of bacon paste.

The CaNoRock program had people split up into 5 different groups:

1) Rocket Physics
2) Experimental Instrumentation
3) Payload
4) Telemetry and
5) Atmospheric Physics

My first two choices were Telemetry and Experiment, which were not very popular with the rest of the people actually, so I figured I would get my first choice of Telemetry, but I did not! I was placed in Experimental group, which turned out to be exciting.

This is the magnetic field sensor printed circuit board with two components already soldered on to it.

So what did we do in this Experiment group? Who were we - Only the best mix of students from across the globe! We had Christian, a German fellow living and studying in Tromso, We had Conor, a U of Alberta Mechanical Engineer, we had Eino, a student studying and living in Oslo, and myself.

On the first day of group rocket work, we soldered up 3 sensors and tested them to make sure they were working. This involved learning how to solder surface mount components the hard way - trial and error! (We didn't break anything though - woohoo!).

This is a picture of the payload antennas. They are dipoles and are encased in the top and bottom parts of the aluminum structure in the picture.

This is a picture of the radio transmitter board, the two cables coming off of it are connected to the antennas. It transmits at over 200 kbaud.

Here is a picture of the finished board Conor and I soldered together, it is a magnetometer. It measures strength of magnetic fields in two directions. This is one way we can determine how the rocket is spinning, because the earth's magnetic field is generally constant on a small scale, so we can assume that any big changes we see from the sensor are just because the rocket is moving through the air. Very cool. I'll put up pictures of the sensor data later.

Here is everyone (there were many Ph. D students there as well on a different mission) about to learn about the Mesosphere, which is the middle layer of the atmosphere and where recently (since the industrial revolution) "night clouds" have been seen. Night clouds (or noctilucent clouds) are thought to be ice forming on particles in the mesosphere.

Soup with cut up hotdog intermission.

QUESTION OF THE DAY... What time zone am I in? (Any comments on how to deal with jet lag?)