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Missions

The instrumentation payload is the largest & heaviest payload we have ever launched. It contains a full suit of sensors:

• 5 accelerometers
• 3 rate gyros
• 3 magnetometers
• 7 temperature sensors
• Load cell (plus amplifier)
  
• GPS unit
• Pressure sensor
• 2 Relative humidity (RH) sensors
  

The payload is controlled by a Asus EeePC running WindowsXP and LabVIEW. A USB analog-to-digital converter is used to collect all of the sensor information.

A small Picaxe microcontroller is used to monitor and control the temperature of all the critical eletronics and batteries. The laptop was not used simply because all of the input channels on the DAQcard were already used for the other sensors.