Abstract

S²OUTH is a project developing a modern and reliable telemetry system. The goal of the system is to provide live telemetry including sensor data, and high precision pose estimation for the entire duration of a suborbital spaceshot flight. Furthermore the project includes a secondary high bandwidth RF link to stream high fidelity video of the rocket during the flight.

The project was originally conceived in collaboration with the student team from HyEnD Stuttgart for usage in their N₂ORTH hybrid propellant rocket. Since then a preliminary version of the project named South Cube has flown as payload on the Ispida rocket build by Aerospace Team Graz (ASTG) and further options for collaborations with student teams are being explored.

The N₂ORTH rocket is currently scheduled to fly in early to mid 2026. More details can be found on the N₂ORTH page.

Capabilities

The S²OUTH project is designed to provide the following capabilities:

Distributed system

The onboard system is made up of 9 distinct boards connected via a two redundant CAN busses to ensure that no single component failure causes the entire system to fail.

Sensor board

The system contains two redundant sensor boards each containing two IMUs, a magnetometer, a barometer and a connection to one of two DLR Phoenix GPS receivers. Each sensor board also contains a MCU for pose estimation.

Telemetry downlink

Built on top of the OpenLST project, our 437Mhz based telemetry downlink guarantees a stable connection throughout the entire flight.

Power supply

The power supply connects to two 4s2p LiIon batteries (main and backup) and distributes the power to all different systems using isolated power rails. The power supply board constantly monitors current, voltage, and temperature of the two batteries and is able to quickly switch to the backup if measurements exceed specifications.

RocketHD

Build on top of the OpenIPC and wifibroadcast project, RocketHD aims to provide a high bandwith link for video and backup telemetry transmission. Using our custom WifiBroadcast software as well as four amplifiers and patch antennas we hope to receive high definition video live from space.

Groundstation

To enable continuous receiving of data a custom build antenna tracker is used. As part of the RocketHD project we aim to point a 5.8GHz dish antenna with 0.5 degrees of precision.