Analysis of the effectiveness of sensors to fulfil scientific cases in the fly a Rocket! campaign

With space becoming a newly ubiquitous phenomenon, due to the evident popularisation of space travel, the European Space Agency Education has a mission to educate the future generations of engineers and scientists to accelerate new findings in the field. The Fly a Rocket campaign was curated to involve early undergraduates in the full launch of a sounding rocket, notably the Mongoose 98. In collaboration with Andøya Space Centre, the aim of the launch was to successfully meet the 4 predefined scientific cases. These were named Oliver Twist, The Cloud Atlas, 451 Degrees Fahrenheit and Rock & Roll and the cases were assigned to the three teams working on the campaign: sensors, payload, and telemetry. The week consisted of learning through the form of lectures and practical understanding via the instruction of the Andøya Space Team. The rocket launch culminated on the 4th day of the 5-day campaign, with a weather balloon also gathering atmospheric conditions. Among the presenters of this report, both members had notable roles as the Principal Investigator and Range Control Officer, allowing us to provide both an overall analysis of the mission and in-depth insights, associated with the varying sensors. The Range Control Officer led the countdown procedure to launch alongside the Range Safety Officer, while simultaneously building the pressure sensor. Moreover, the Principal Investigator worked on the magnetometer. Our team will present on behalf of the sensors team and evaluate the accuracy of the sensors to provide valid conclusions for the scientific cases. The team will present whether the accuracy of the data was reliable enough to answer our proposed questions. Additionally, thorough analysis was conducted using OpenRocket to determine its viability for future rocket launches. Issues during the campaign launch included the mismanagement of payload integration being slowed and OpenRocket being inaccurate past a Mach number>2. Ultimately, this report verified some of our cases and provided important telemetry data to improve the use of future launches.