Versions Compared

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

...

Since we did not recover the rocket or payload, we cannot verify this was the failure we experienced with 100% certainty, but no other proposed theories explain why both BRB's lost lock at the same time and continued to send good APRS packets.

Potential Root Causes

  • Lack of knowledge
    • Unknown failure mode prior to flight
    • Hard to mitigate short of a test flight
  • Launched too late
    • More recovery time would have given us a better chance to find the rocket without GPS
  • Lacked directional antenna
    • A directional antenna could have been used to get a heading using signal strength from the APRS packets that were being transmitted
    • Our recovery teams had dipole antennas making it impossible to get a heading from a single point

...