Design of the Guided Parachute Recovery System for Small High Altitude Balloon Payloads

When conducting experiments with high-altitude balloons, one of the biggest challenges is the recovery of the scientific payload. Despite having reliable tracking methods during flight and knowing the landing location of the balloon payloads, these payloads have a high probability of landing in inaccessible locations that inhibit timely recovery. Therefore, the goal of the Guided Parachute Recovery system is to be a reliable method for guiding a descending, high-altitude payload to at least one preselected location for recovery. The two main projects that comprise the overall mission are the automated steering system and the pathfinding system for selecting the optimal landing zone. The overall system will consist of four subsystems; parachute and deployment (PDS), flight control actuators (FCA), flight sensor processing (FSP), and flight guidance (FGS). All these subsystems will work together during the recovery operation. First, the system will release from the balloon at a mission-specified altitude and begin free-fall with a drogue parachute. Then, when it is at a predetermined altitude, the system will deploy its main, steerable, parachute. The system will manipulate the control devices (aka. the servo actuators) to continually match the systems heading to the heading of the landing point once parachute deployment is complete. When it reaches the land point, it will loiter as it slowly descends to the ground.