Validation Flight Experiment for a Sounding Balloon Photovoltaic-based Attitude Determination System

Sounding balloons have proven to be a very effective low-cost method to bring scientific and commercial payloads to the near-space environment. In the frame of our ongoing effort towards the development of a small stratospheric platform with autonomous flying capabilities, we have undertaken the design and manufacture of a flight experiment to verify the possibility to perform onboard attitude determination using the solar cell power output measurements to complement the inertial sensor. The system is based on six low-cost terrestrial solar cells placed on the sides of a box-shaped gondola, lifted to about 34 km altitude by a weather balloon. We describe the system architecture, the results of the first experimental flight and the post-landing attitude reconstruction.