Aerostratospheric Introduces xFall2, a High-Altitude Black-Box Data Package for Every Mission
illi News/10342702

CASEY, Ill. - illiNews -- Aerostratospheric, through Midwest Stratospheric Data Systems, today introduced xFall2, a dedicated high-altitude black-box data package manufactured to fly on all Aerostratospheric missions as an independent recovery and logging layer.

xFall2 is the organization's failsafe fallback precaution pack. If primary telemetry is delayed, degraded, or lost, xFall2 continues to record and report so the flight is not a single-path data event. The pack combines offline onboard logging with dual-path real-time tracking — terrestrial 4G LTE plus satellite — so position and environmental samples remain available even when one network is out of range.

The system is designed for the same operating environment as Aerostratospheric's lightweight high-altitude platforms: rapid ascent, parachute recovery, and public data release after the payload is retrieved. xFall2 does not replace primary science telemetry. It sits beside it as a second, independent path for recovery and post-flight archive.

Why a second path matters

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High-altitude balloon missions depend on radio and network links that can fade at burst, during a fast descent, or over remote Midwest recovery terrain. A lost live feed can erase the last minutes of a profile and slow the search for the payload. xFall2 is built so those minutes still exist on the vehicle — and so a live position can still reach the ground through a second radio path.

"A science flight should never hang on one radio path," said Jeremy D. Higgs, who leads Midwest Stratospheric Data Systems under Aerostratospheric. "xFall2 is the precaution pack we put on every mission so that if the primary link drops, we still have a black box on the payload and a live track to bring it home. Recovery is part of the science. The archive only exists if the box comes back."

Independent onboard logging tools keep a local record of the flight even if radio or network paths drop. Data is recovered with the payload after landing and prepared for the post-flight archive.

Where it fits the platform family

Aerostratospheric's public engineering platforms include the X2Griffon flagship stratospheric profiler (~1.01 lb, target approximately 115,000 ft), the MAD-AP mid-altitude drift system, and a continuous ground weather station in Casey, Illinois, contributing to NASA GLOBE (GO-4VW9B). xFall2 is the failsafe layer intended to ride those flight systems rather than replace them.

https://aerostratospheric.com