SkyNet started as a summer research project between me and Nicolas Marks, both of us are in the Northwestern University Space Technology and Rocketry Society (NUSTARS). One issue we faced was that the rockets we flew ended up with failures and no data was gathered. Also, recovery of rockets were difficult because we sometimes cannot find the rocket if it drift too far off the launch pad. Thus we purposed the system which is capable of sending rocket status and collecting data, while assisting the rocket recovery process.
SkyNet is capable of transmitting and visualizing rocket data with a range of up to 25 miles line of sight. The system is composed of a ground station and a rocket module. The ground station is written in TypeScript and Rust using React and Tauri for cross platform packaging. The rocket module is a ESP32 with a LoRa radio, a GPS module, and a 9-axis IMU. The ground station is capable of receiving data from the rocket module and visualizing the data in real-time. The ground station is also capable of sending commands to the rocket module to control the rocket.