NASA Ballooning Takes Flight from Cape Ann, MA
(Press Release, 15 September 2006)
{Contact - William Waller at William.waller@tufts.edu , (617) 627-3655}
History was made this July 6-8, as NASA educators and local area students launched instrumented balloons into the stratosphere and then recovered the payloads at sea. The Northeast Ballooning Workshop was the first of its kind to occur in New England. "To make it work, we needed help from NASA ballooning experts who traveled to Rockport, MA from Puerto Rico, New York, and Vermont," said Bill Waller - a Tufts University professor, NASA educator, and resident of Rockport. We also received vital support from several local ham operators and boaters," Waller said.
The workshop was co-hosted by the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium (MASGC) and the New England Space Science Initiative in Education (NESSIE) -- regional agents of NASA's far-flung education program. Participants included students from Kuss Middle School in Fall River, one of 164 NASA Explorer Schools nationwide. These students were already trained in ham radio techniques, with operator's licenses to show for it. Also participating were students from Boston Latin High School, Rockport High School, Tufts University, and MIT. All of the students played critical roles - from soldering the electronic circuitry, to assembling the payload modules, calibrating the instrumental responses, launching the balloons, tracking the radio signals, and retrieving the payloads at sea.
The first balloon to launch carried a so-called CricketSat . Provided by Michael Fortney of the University of Vermont, the CricketSat payload consists of a matchbox-size temperature sensor, circuit board, and battery that is able to communicate a beeping signal over a ham radio frequency. The time between beeps is sensitive to temperature which changes drastically with altitude. By calibrating the simple instrument's response to a cup of ice, the hot interior of a car, and other environments of known temperature, the students were able to interpret the received signals once the balloon was aloft. The balloon and CricketSat payload were launched from the Rockport Schools playing field on the first day of the workshop. With help from the Puerto Rican ham radio operators, the CricketSat payload was tracked to a maximum height of 32,000 feet, a temperature of -40 degrees Fahrenheit, and a distance exceeding 130 miles - more distant than any prior CricketSat tracking.
The second balloon was considerably larger and more capable of lofting heavier loads into "near space" -- where the atmospheric pressure is a sparse fraction of what it is on the ground, the daytime sky appears black, and the curvature of the Earth can be imaged by payloads carrying onboard cameras. These heavier imaging payloads are known as BalloonSats, whose construction and calibration took up most of the 3-day workshop. Oscar Resto and Gladys Muñoz of the Puerto Rico Space Grant Consortium took the lead in guiding the students through the many steps of crafting the circuitry and building the payloads. The students made three BalloonSat modules, two of which ended up launching along with a GPS location-finding module and a radio communications module.
To ensure that the payloads could be retrieved at a reasonable distance from shore, the flight had to be terminated well before the balloon reached its maximum attainable altitude of 90,000 feet. Even so, this particular flight made history in being the first sea recovery of a BalloonSat launched from the continental United States, and the farthest distance of recovery (13 miles northeast of Halibut Point). "The stunning pictures of Cape Ann from an estimated altitude of 16,000 feet are positive proof that scientific ballooning can be successfully pursued by motivated teams of students and educators," Waller concluded. "Perhaps more important was the teamwork and personal self-esteem that arose from our venture into the stratosphere," he added. Waller hopes to continue with student-focused scientific ballooning in New England, and welcomes any input from interested parties to be sent to William.waller@tufts.edu . |
