Advanced Polymer Stratosphere Research

Polymer samples from two Polymer research labs at the Georgia Institute of Technology will be flown to an altitude over 100,000 feet to answer research questions related about the effect of being at the edge of space for a set of original polymer materials.

To support the research, custom circuits and custom structures were designed for flight. Circuit boards were designed, built, and tested and structures were mostly created with CAD and 3D printed.

Science Objectives

Organic Solar Cell Testing (10 cells with 8 measurements each with analog voltage measured through non-inverting op-amps with gain of 2
Photodiode Transmission Measurements through various samples measuring combinations of UV-A, UV-B, UV-C, and visible/IR - total of 18 photodiode measurements
Moisture Sensor Test - recording O2, relative humidity, temperature and pressure underneath the sample
Capacitance - measuring capacitance changes in polymer sample

Based on input from lead scientists, developed all experiment hardware to fly on the DREAMS science platform to the Stratosphere.

DREAMS 33 / DREAMS 34

Image shows the external payload plate that will carry 4 primary experiments on polymers developed at Georgia Tech and also a rocket in a custom platform that will be launched at 82,000 ft (25km). These two missions will be released within 60s of each other and they will each have the same approximate lift rate so they will stay close together. A suite of cameras will capture the launch from 3 points of view (D33 looking at D34, video on rocket, D34 looking at the rocket). The DREAMS-34 mission is collecting data on how much higher a stratospheric rocket will go so that future inexpensive missions over 150,000 feet can be planned.

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