Mystery Solved: Stratofox Recovers CSXT Booster

Updates to this info will be announced on the Stratofox talk mail list.
See also:
Locations of search and recovery for the CSXT Space Shot 2004, Feb 2009 (posted for the 5th anniversary)
5th anniversary - CSXT Space Shot 2004, May 2009

On May 17, 2004, Stratofox participated in CSXT Space Shot 2004, which succeeded as the first launch of a rocket to space without government funding and the first amateur (all volunteer) launch to space. Stratofox found the nose cone and avionics in 24 hours.

But the booster, the section with the motor and fins, remained a mystery. We heard the radio beacon from the booster and nose sections on the re-entry from the space flight.

Then we heard two sonic booms. We had been told to expect a sonic boom if either part of the rocket had failed to deploy its parachute. (The boom was expected to be too low to be audible otherwise.) So the sonic booms seemed to indicate bad news. After that, we only heard signals from the nose/avionics section. We followed that signal and found it the next day. The nose section had all the electronics necessary to prove the space flight was a success. But we assumed the booster was lost and probably underground.

At the launch site, Stratofox member Jeremy Cooper KE6JJJ had set up stereo audio recording equipment to record the launch. It had also recorded the sonic booms. Two months later, CSXT's Jerry Larson was curious about what analysis could be done on the audio of the sonic booms. To his surprise, the quality of the recording was good enough to see the N-shaped pattern indicating the leading and trailing edge booms. He could tell which one was the nose and which was the booster - the length of time between the booms indicated the length of the object. And the booster's boom indicated its parachute was deployed.

See the story about the re-entry boom analysis.

Jerry used flight data from the avionics section of the rocket, weather data from the flight day, and simulation of the re-entry to estimate a search area. The main unknown was how effective the parachute was. The search area was 1 mile either side of a line from the "ballistic entry point" (zero parachute effectiveness) across a rugged mountain range to the point of highest expected parachute effectiveness, which was near the point where we found the nose cone.

With that new info, we began to start searching on the ground and in the air.

As you'll see in the timeline below, we were looking in the right area. But we just didn't have enough time with thunderstorms forcing us off the mountains every afternoon in August. (That's normal in Nevada for that time of year.) The booster was found on Nov 10 by a BLM helicopter crew who were doing a survey of wild horses.

We quickly arranged an expedition to go get it. A 4x4'ing trip this time of year requires more experience and equipment. Some of our members who are in El Dorado County (California) Search & Rescue recruited fellow S&R members who are Ham Radio operators and have experience and equipment for Winter rescue.

We got the booster on Friday, November 26 and returned it to CSXT. It's now on its way to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington DC.

Something else that we learned: an audible sonic boom is inevitable when re-entering the atmosphere from a space flight. The boom was definitely audible even from the high altitude which it decelerated to subsonic speeds.

Personal Accounts

Stratofox and CSXT volunteers have been asked to send in their personal accounts of participating in the launch and search. We'll add them here.

Timeline and Pictures

Booster recovery video: 320x240 WMV Video (7 minutes running time)

• smaller file (14MB download)
• better quality (18MB download)
• on YouTube

We've also received a report that a rocketeer from Texas named Chuck Cummins performed at least one ground search with approval of CSXT's Ky Michaelson. If we ever get more info, we'll post it.

Participants

Participants are listed alphabetically by last name.

Event	Participants
	Stratofox	CSXT	TRA	local residents
Aug 14-15 search	Jeremy Cooper KE6JJJ Will Galloway AE6EY Ian Kluft KO6YQ POC: Jay Lawson	Tony Cochran Eric Knight KB1EHE Rod Lane N1FNE Clark Larson Jerry Larson Elsie Mathews KB1IFZ Steve McMacken KD7SQX Jodi Michaelson Ky Michaelson	Bruce Lee	Janice Samuelson K2JES Ken Samuelson KS2R
Aug 20 search	Ian Kluft KO6YQ Jay Lawson Perry Miller
Nov 17 fly-by				Ken Samuelson KS2R
Nov 20 search	Mike Cornish Jay Lawson Perry Miller POC: Ian Kluft KO6YQ
Nov 26-27 recovery	Will Galloway AE6EY Ian Kluft KO6YQ Matthew Kluft Olavo Kluft Jay Lawson Dave Masten KG6FNL Diane Palmer KC6HVP Randy Palmer WA6LCD Steve Palmer KA6DHU Ray Pledger KE6JOQ James Robertson KG6FKP Tom White KG6BRK POC: Justin Rocha KG6SGU	Jim Hoffman Eric Knight KB1EHE Jerry Larson Elsie Mathews KB1IFZ	Bruce Kelly	Ken Samuelson KS2R

Did we forget anyone? We are trying to give credit where it's due to all who participated. Any omission is unintentional and we'd like to know about it so we can correct it.

"POC" indicates the Stratofox "point of contact" for the mission. Usually the team in the field can't be called directly. So the POC is the designated contact person who is not out on the mission. The POC is the one whom the team in the field contacts with updates, and where messages can be left for the team for when they call.

Links to this story

HobbySpace: CSXT booster recovered (Nov 30 news)