Rocket Avionics.

Flight computer, sensors and telemetry for Sunspear, a student rocket aiming to become France’s first student-built supersonic rocket, targeting EuRoC 2026.

The problem

With the Supaero Space Section, the student space club at ISAE-SUPAERO, I’m part of the Sunspear team building a competition rocket that aims to become France’s first student-built supersonic rocket, targeting the 9,000 m-apogee category at EuRoC 2026.

What I did

As an avionics engineer, I designed and tested the avionics subsystem: a custom four-layer PCB built around an ESP32-S3 flight computer, with separate power domains for the logic and the pyrotechnic circuits. The flight software runs on FreeRTOS as a finite-state machine — startup, idle, boost, coast, drogue, main and landed, plus an abort state — with altitude estimated by a Kalman filter fusing barometer and IMU data, pyrotechnic channels with continuity sensing, and telemetry sent over an 868 MHz LoRa link to a ground station. I managed the hardware/software integration, with a focus on reliability under high-g launch conditions, within a 33-person student team.

Highlights

1. 01Custom four-layer flight-computer PCB built around an ESP32-S3
2. 02Flight software finite-state machine on FreeRTOS, from startup through landing
3. 03Altitude estimation via a Kalman filter fusing barometer and IMU data
4. 04Telemetry over an 868 MHz LoRa link to a ground station

Team