Pegasus High Altitude Balloon Project

Pegasus I, Pegasus II, Pegasus III, Pegasus IV, Pegasus V, CF GPS Howto, #highaltitude Logs, Links, Ideas

Latest Updates

Peg IV scrubbed - Some flaw in the system discovered at the launch site - Peg IV will be retired (though might fly again one day) and will move on to Peg V which will return to being gumstix powered.
Nearly finished building Peg IV - Some pictures on flickr
GPS added to Peg IV through the second serial port
Have added sms capabilities to Peg IV with a nokia 5110 and gnokii
Added some pictures from my time in Niger working with AMMA and much larger balloons (up to 12000m3) see here
New plans for Pegasus IV - working on a cheap and accessible method of building a payload using a Motorola WR850G running OpenWrt as the flight computer - see Peg IV page.
Construction of Pegasus IV begun
Pegasus III - Success - reached 19495m and took 200 pics!
Pegasus III payload finished, added some pictures.
Added KML of Pegasus I's flight so can be seen in Google Earth see here
Lots of updates + unpublished pictures for Pegasus II launch
GPSstix Active Antenna Hack here
New camera has arrived and been wired up, sim cards also have arrived
More parts arrive, GPS works but camera is dead
Progress report for Pegasus III and secondary payload Bellerophon
Parts list for Pegasus III
Co-founded UK High Altitude Society - ukhas and wiki.
Added an ideas page: here
Waiting for new gumstix and audiostix II to be shipped before work can begin
Updated website, work has begun on planning Pegasus III
Pegasus II lost

What is the Pegasus High Altitude Balloon Project?

The Pegasus High Altitude Balloon project is a UK based amateur student run project that involves launching payloads to "Near Space" (between an altitude of 60,000ft (20km) and 325,000ft (99km). This is achieved through the use of helium weather balloons which are designed to burst at a certain height and then the payload returns to earth via parachute.

At present we have launched three missions; Pegasus I reaching 66,000ft and being successfully reclaimed, Pegasus II which is at present missing (probably having landed in the North Sea.) and Pegasus III which was successful. Pegasus IV is in development and also work has begun on the UKHAS Glider project in collaboration with other UK based amateurs.

Due to restrictions in the HAM licence in the UK the typical frequencies can not be used, instead we use GSM and also licence exempt frequencies mainly 434mhz at 10mW. This does mean that there can be a period of communication blackout during the flight however it forces us to make the payload relatively autonomous.

However our system has the bonus of using readily available equipment and being potentially much cheaper.

Any Questions contact [email protected] I've set up a channel for high altitude projects such as Pegasus on freenode as #highaltitude - if you are interested in this sort of thing then get on there!

Pegasus Missions are powered by:

See the old index page here|