MBuRST
Michigan Balloon Recovery and Satellite Testbed
About MBuRST
The Michigan Balloon Recovery and Satellite Testbed is a design team at the University of Michigan focused on flying scientific and satellite payloads on high-altitude weather balloons. Our balloons reach altitudes upwards of 100,000 ft and temperatures as low as -60 degrees Celcius. This near-space environment allows MBuRST to be a great testing platform for student-built space systems.
Our project began in January of 2009 through the AOSS 583 graduate design course before becoming a team in the Student Space Systems Fabrication Lab (S3FL). We are currently working on a wide variety of projects, with opportunities for multiple engineering disciplines including integrated systems testing, structural analysis, command and control systems operation, and software development. See below for more details!
Our Projects
Predictions
Our predictions team works on assessing balloon flight paths to determine when and where we launch and retrieve our balloons! We are currently working on improving both our pre-flight predictions and live balloon tracking software.
ATACS
The Aerial Termination and Communication System is an open source, two-way communication system for balloon tracking and control. We are working to enable communication between the ground and our balloon, as well as between payloads on the balloon.
SDR
Software Defined Radio uses software instead of hardware to process radio signals. Our balloons are tracked via the APRS channel for ham radio; developing SDR minimizes the hardware needed to track our balloons in real time.
PPS
The passive payload stabilization project is working on developing methods to stabilize our payloads during flight using passive control methods.