GRUPO 1

ITHAKA
PROJECT

Ithaka Project

Ithaka is the codename for a project of the course of Data Aquisition Systems (Sistemas de Aquisição de Dados) for students of Technological Physics Engineering (Engenharia Física Tecnológica), at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal.
This project aimed the construction of a partially recoverable weather balloon and it took place during the summer of 2000. 

The project

The project is composed by two main modules: Icarus and Dædalus, which were two characters of the greek mythology. To find out some more information about them, follow this link.

Icarus is composed of a helium balloon, a parachute and a box containing electronics. This module acquires information about temperature, relative humidity and pressure and transmits the data via RF to the Dædalus module.
When a pre-programmed time has passed or a certain pressure is reached, Icarus releases and destroys the helium balloon and starts its fall. Once it reaches the ground, the module is renamed Wally (Icarus dies and Wally borns). Wally awakes by releasing the parachute and starts beeping every second.

Dædalus is the ground station. It is used both to receive the signals from Icarus (the data) and to track down Wally. 

You can learn some more about the limitations of the project's application by following the specifications link.

The Launch

It has not an entire success. You can find the pictures we took here.

The Authors

We took some pictures as the project developed. You can find them here.

Technicalities