SCH's high altitude balloon (HAB) program began as a senior* project in the Spring semester of 2022. The launch was a spectacular failure and never got off the ground. Instead of launching a balloon, the team ended up going out for water ice. 

Undeterred, SCH partnered with Drexel University in the Fall of 2022 to form the "Devil Dragon Balloon Team," as one of 53 teams across the US participating in the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP). The first few launches with NEBP were also challenging, but the team rallied and successfully completed multiple launches and payload retrievals throughout the 2023-2024 school year, including launches into both the 2023 annular and 2024 total solar eclipses. 

Since the end of NEBP in the spring of 2024, the Devil Dragon Balloon team is still going strong! SCH and Drexel remain partners and participated in the NEBP extension program in the spring of 2025. Our two current projects are Project Zephyrus, a balloon mission designed to carry small-scale student projects to near space, and HERA, an international collaboration between US and Australian balloon teams to study cosmic rays in the Earth's atmosphere.  We are also working on an entry to the HASP program for the 25-26 school year.

Are you interested in launching your own high-altitude balloons? This guide will walk you through the basics of launching balloons in the US!

*Note: The senior, Tony, from that project, graduated soon after the failed launch. He went on to join the University of Maryland's Near Space Club, was a leader in high-altitude ballooning at UMD, and participated in UMD's NEBP team!