In this blog we would like to focus on the people within our society, getting their hands dirty on actual rocket science. Today we continue the story of Simon Verkleij! Find the first part of this series of blog posts here!

Hi, my name is Simon Verkleij and I am the Chief Electronics of Stratos IV. In this part of the blog post series, I will give an overview of the projects that we are currently working on.

The last few weeks we have been mainly looking at what have to improved on the electronics system in order to fly it to space on Stratos IV. One of the things you need to consider when launching a rocket to 100 km is the telemetry downlink. Having a wireless signal transmitted from more than 100 km is quite difficult. Imagine your Wi-Fi router transmitting at your home in Delft. Could you connect your phone to it when you are in Eindhoven, 100 km away? Even when you are in direct line of sight, this would not be possible with the normal antennas in your router and phone. The main reason we will be able to receive live video from the rocket is because of the big dish antenna.

Stratos IV mission patch.

One of the new features of the electronics of Stratos IV will be the charging system. The rocket will have multiple batteries, used for different printed circuit boards (PCBs), motors and valves. To ensure that these batteries do not empty when the rocket is in the tower, we will charge them via the cable that is connected to the outside of the rocket. Stratos III also had this cable, but there it only powered the PCBs during ground operations, it did not charge the batteries.

I am looking forward to the upcoming year where I will be working on designing and making the electronics of Stratos IV together with the rest of the team!

by Simon Verkleij

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