This paper outlines the late-stage development, integration, and test of a Level 2 rocket which serves as an avionics and GN&C test-bed for a canard-based active control vehicle. Given the results of an in-house 6-DOF simulator, preliminary testing began with the characterization of the on-board inertial sensors. The frequency stability of the IMU was determined via Allan Deviation plots which map the bias instability and random walk characteristics. These properties aided in calibrating the inertial sensors for subsequent integration testing and eventual flight. A novel state estimation algorithm was designed to utilize the measurements from the sensors. The PID controller utilizes the estimator to compute the necessary deflections of the canards to maintain the target orientation of the vehicle. Upon implementation of the avionics architecture and corresponding controller, verification of the canard actuation was conducted with hardware-in-the-loop procedures. The result of the study is a robust GN&C and flight software architecture that can be implemented in any launch system that employs canard actuation for active control.
