Sounding Rocket ExperimentElectronics – RTL Design and Validation

Sammanfattning: The Infrared Spectroscopy to Analyse the middle Atmosphere Composition (ISAAC) is an experimental module designed by KTH students. It consists of a Rocket Mounted Unit (RMU) and two Free-Falling Units (FFU) carried inside. The main objective of the experiment is to demonstrate ability of one FFU to track the other and to carry out measurements in cooperation. This Master’s thesis covers the development and implementation of the ejection system as well as data acquisition for the ISAAC experiment to have well-timed ejection of the FFUs and data for a post-flight analysis. Ejection control and communication is implemented in a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) using VHDL hardware description language. Newly developed firmware verification and the post-flight analysis results are also presented in the report. The ISAAC experiment was launched on May 29 from Esrange, Kiruna onboard the REXUS15 rocket.