30,000-foot-high supersonic rocket flight captures parachute opening with selfie camera

A self-taught rocketry enthusiast and YouTuber, Joe Barnard, posted a video on his YouTube channel in which he flew a rocket to nearly 30,000 feet at supersonic speeds before ejecting a small camera pod near the top to capture the parachutes opening from outside the vehicle in slow motion.

The rocket launch took place just outside of Randsburg, California, and the video was posted Thursday, November 5.

According to Barnard, such views have stayed away from the reach of amateur rocketry experiments, as the timing, forces, and recovery have to come into alignment after the vehicle has set off its journey at heavy acceleration during wobbly flight.

Customized rocket design

Barnard designed the rocket and the remote operation system specifically to achieve the purpose at the Mach 2 speeds.

Nine layers of fiberglass were used to make the upper piece of the rocket. This multi-layered material boosts the rocket’s strength to handle the pressure and speeds during its flight, even with a large opening through which the camera pod sticks out. For the ride, he also reinforced the rocket’s lower booster with a carbon fiber tube and powered it with a powerful impulse-class engine that could deliver an average thrust of 2300 newtons (N). He made his own mix of rocket propellant for the launch.

Besides the modifications to the aircraft’s design, Barnard used a separate computer system named Fluctus to keep a watch on the speed, pressure, and altitude of the rocket and decide the firing of pods and opening of parachutes during the ascent.

Fixed camera’s position

He also adjusted the camera to prepare it for the uphill battle.

To ensure the lens was correctly positioned during the tall order, he ripped apart the GoPro Hero 12, flipped it on its head, and placed it inside the 3D-printed casing. He added a sensor cable extension to capture the necessary views and upgraded the firmware to limit the recording rate to 240 frames per second.

Yet another challenge remains: how to maintain the camera’s orientation after it leaves the safe haven of the launch vehicle.

Once the pod was ejected, it no longer had the rocket to stabilize it.

The position was secured thanks to a small battery that was triggered by a small pin at the launch and powered the camera, a spinning motor wheel, and a gyroscope for the task.

The spinning gyroscope helped prevent it from tumbling, allowing it to keep the camera aimed at the rocket and capture smooth footage of the parachutes deploying.

After recording the views, a recovery system Barnard called Repris consisted of a streamer to slow its drop and a GPS tracker to help locate the pod after landing.

Faulty crash landing prediction

The team captured the views from 30,000 feet but failed to capture the landing.

During the test, the recovery crew found the rocket’s upper section and the camera pod nearly 350 meters from the launch pad. The pod remained intact and successfully captured aerial footage. However, the flight system encountered a technical fault when Fluctus misinterpreted air pressure fluctuations as a crash landing and prematurely declared an emergency apogee, assuming the rocket was beyond recovery.

That signal triggered the camera pod and parachute deployment circuits while the rocket was still traveling at more than 700 mph.

The intense aerodynamic forces shredded the parachute and tore it away from the rocket’s upper section, eliminating any chance of capturing slow-motion footage of the landing.