Camera trade study
Led the comparison of candidate cameras against the optical, environmental, interface, and resource requirements.
Team capstone · Mission design
NOVA stratospheric payload
A balloon-borne instrument concept for measuring optical night-sky brightness above much of the atmosphere.
Camera trade studyOnboard computeData architectureTeam systems engineering
Project overview
A balloon payload for measuring night-sky brightness.
Our team designed a scientific payload to capture optical night-sky brightness at stratospheric altitude. The camera system had to fit within the balloon platform’s power, computing, storage, communications, environmental, and mission-duration limits.
The midterm report, camera trade study, and three team videos are included below.
My role on the team
Camera selection, onboard computing, and data capture.
Onboard computing
Developed the compute architecture for image acquisition, control, and payload interfaces.
Data-capture strategy
Helped define how observations would be scheduled, stored, and recovered within the available data and power budgets.
Team record
Report and camera trade study.
NOVA was developed by Aiden Weatherbee, Katia Kassabov, Prajakta Lal, Harrish Elango, Sarthak Sahai, Gaurav Charan Moturi, and collaborators.
DocumentsMission report and sensor-selection work
The report covers the team’s mission architecture and subsystem development. The camera trade study records the sensor-selection process.
Full team report
Mission documentation.
Project videos
Team presentations and discussion.
The original overview and capstone discussions are embedded here in full.
Project overview
The mission goals, payload concept, and team approach.
Mini Capstone Day — team Q&A
The NOVA team answers questions and explains the design in greater depth.
Additional technical discussion
Further discussion of key mission and subsystem decisions.