High Altitude Balloon Launch

What a great experience this was! John Maca (the parent of a student) invited me to join him and other members of the South Texas Balloon Launch Team in launching a high altitude balloon from the Wharton Regional Airport on August 22, 2015. The organization has a major balloon launch every August, with smaller balloons launched throughout the rest of the year. They attach various cameras and instruments on board to collect data from the atmosphere, and also cross band repeaters to allow HAM radio operators to communicate at greater distances (several hundred miles, instead of line-of-site).

These are some of the photos from that launch.

The balloon was made of latex and inflated with helium. In this picture you can see the beginning of that process. The helium came from compressed gas cylinders in the bed of the white pickup truck. Arrayed on the ground between the balloon and the camera can be seen the various scientific sensor "packages" that would be carried aloft.

The sensor packages weighed a total of about twelve pounds, so the balloon was inflated until it was generating about fifteen pounds of upward lift.

The balloon and its cargo were prepared in an airplane hanger then walked out to the runway for release.

The balloon stayed aloft for a couple of hours. Air pressure decreases as altitude increases, so the balloon actually got bigger as it rose. Maximum altitude for this balloon was around 84,000 feet (commercial jets, by comparison, fly at altitudes of 30,000-50,000 feet), at which time the balloon was about the size of a tiny house. Then it popped, and the sensor packages parachuted down into a rice field. I got to join the chase team that went out to retrieve it, which was just as much fun as the release! We used GPS coordinates to get close, then listened for an audio beeper to pinpoint its exact location in the field.

A "mission control center" was set up near the runway, where computers received data transmitted from the balloon packages in real-time. It was the first time for them to send up a digital TV transmitter, so we were able to see live images from the flight (very cool!). Other bits of data (footage from the other cameras, for example) were downloaded afterwards once the packages had been picked up.

Here's a link to the South Texas Balloon Launch Team's website, where you can find more information about this balloon (BLT-42) as well as previous launches: www.w5acm.net.

I hope to post other links soon with the data (and more pictures) from this flight, so check back later! And I'm working on getting a balloon launch to take place from our football field later this year, during school hours, so that students can be a part of it. Something to look forward to...!