Archive for November, 2009
Near Space Adventure: Flight 3 – Post Flight
by admin on Nov.23, 2009, under Technical
Mission Failure
We launched from an elementary school playground. What we know is that instead of gaining serious altitude, the balloon and payload achieved neutral buoyancy and drifted for hundreds of miles inside of a rain cloud. After many frustrating hours of watching the GPS pings come in, the balloon and payload finally ascended to near space. Unfortunately, our video camera was only capable of shooting two hours of video.
We did retrieve the payload, but the video footage only showed the guts of a rain cloud.
This was a learning experience for us, so we do not view it as a total failure. In the future, we will schedule our launches like NASA. If someone even thinks it’s going to rain, the launch gets postponed. 
I do believe that we are going to launch again in the spring.
Near Space Adventure: Flight 3
by admin on Nov.05, 2009, under Technical
Project goal:
To launch a weather balloon that lifts our payload to 100,000 feet, shoot video of the earth from 100,000 feet, and recover the payload safely back on earth.
Inventory:
1200 gram balloon – http://scientificsales.com
Parachute – http://www.the-rocketman.com/recovery.html
Payload container – to be determined
GPS tracking unit – http://findmespot.com/en/index.php
JVC Everio digital camcorder - http://www.jvc.com
Helium and gas bottle – http://www.airgas.com
Launch location:
We are going to launch from Sweet Home, Oregon at 10 am.
Launch Date:
We will be launching on Wednesday, November 11, 2009.
Tracking:
To track the payload as it travels across Oregon, please visit this link: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/gogl.jsp?glId=0gMU2y5oAuaFa75MC5ftrsdD21RUy8h8Q
Proposed Flight path:
We think that the balloon/payload will travel along the path shown below:
