This work was completed as part of my fourth-year capstone in the Engineering Science program at the University of Toronto. It was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Barth Netterfield at the Balloon Astrophysics Group.

Superbit

GigaBIT is a next-generation balloon-borne stratospheric telescope, designed to capture near-space astronomical imagery with sub-arcsecond precision—at a fraction of the cost of space missions. GigaBIT is targeting gigapixel-resolution. It follows in the footsteps of SuperBIT, a balloon observatory that achieved sub-arcsecond pointing using a layered control system and a custom real-time operating stack.

But with upgraded sensors, optics, and science goals, GigaBIT demands an even faster control loop. To meet these tighter requirements, our team was tasked with redesigning the motor control architecture to achieve sub-millisecond latency from sensor input to actuation.

You can view the our design process and outcomes here