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• The Pyxida could see more satellites on the launch pad than the TeleMega could.

• Configuration lists for the COTS altimeters helped ensure we had the right settings for the TeleMega and Marsa.
• We had Pyxida radio connection at both the away team and the launch line.
• At least one camera was turned on and taking video from Pyxida.
• We got telemetry data from TeleMega at both the away site and launch line.
  • The away team received signifcant amounts of packets across the duration of the entire flight.
• Antennas - We color coded these with tape to ensure they were correctly attached to their corresponding SMA connector that went to the TeleMega and Pyxida.
• TeleMega remained on even after the rocket broke apart.
• A lot of new avionics members were trained and hopefully learned a lot throughout the year.
• New Pyxida hardware was designed and manufactured, and fixes were found and made on all the boards over IAP.
• We made a lot of progress with Pyxida radio and did range testing from the green building twice.
• A lot of progress on the ground station was made, a new mock Pyxida was designed to test it, and we succesfully moved from PySide to PyQt
• Over 100 unit tests and a hardware testing script were created for the Pyxida Firrmware
• PCBs were made to control cameras and sofware was written for them.

Issues and Things to Change

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The radio beacons did not survive the breakup event of the rocket. We need to have a conversation about whether its acceptable for the beacons to not work in case of failures like this, and if not, we need more durable beacons (either design them or buy them.) One way to help fix this could be to use beacons with patch antennas rather than wire whip antennas as they might be more durable.

Software Testing

A lot of progress was made with testing software (over a hundred unit tests were written). But, we need more of a focus on integration testing too. Unit tests are great, but to really test the firmware we need integration tests. I think HOOTL should be a priority for the firmware early next year. We also need more tests of the firmware on the hardware itself.

Avionics Team Structure

As the team orients itself towards a focus on a two stage space shot, the requirements and demands on avionics will become increasingly difficult. Even this year, I struggled with managing the team, learning the diverse set of skills required for avionics to function, training new members, and ensuring that all the requirements were met and tested. I think this is only going to get more difficult, and we might need to restructure avionics for this to work well.

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