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Launched from the NC Maker Faire on June 7th 2014.
The payload was the "blue box" (Its 8th flight!!) with an offset arm. At both ends of the arm were 808 cameras looking in the same direction (for processing into 3D images). A Mobius camera was in the box and looked down the arm. We decided to use one of Lucas' chloroprene balloons as they look more fun than the usual natural latex ones. Besides, it was bright red (Go State!). As expected, the balloon didn't survive to the 85K ft altitude that was predicted for latex.
We had a nice safe flight, easy recovery, AND the recovery team was able to return to the Maker Faire with the payload DURING the event. The crowd gathered to watch the live telemetry during the flight, and the videos after recovery.
We had a great time speaking with lots of visitors to our booth. Wonderful crowd at launch also:
Carter Finley area just after launch
You can make out central campus NCSU from 23,000 ft.
North Carolina on a partly cloudy day from 69,000 feet
Gotta love landing sites like this !
Flight visualization
And an interesting correlation between predicted flight (yellow) and actual (blue)
On this flight, we did NOT see the usual decrease in ascent rate just prior to burst as we often do with latex balloons. We had a very fast descent rate, that thankfully dropped below 10 m/s just before impact.
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