B.L.A.D.E.

The Balloon Launch Assessment Directive for Everyone (BLADE) program is a high-altitude balloon university project with an emphasis in conducting scientific investigations & technology demonstrations. In addition to being a high-altitude balloon project, BLADE is also a developmental project that provides engineering students who have minimal engineering experience with the opportunity to gain relevant skills in engineering, teamwork, and leadership by developing missions in a team setting.

The BLADE program is set up as an educational platform to guide young engineering students through a complete series of engineering processes that emulate industry practices. The design process is also supplemented through the implementation of many technical workshops that teach students a wide variety of skills including structural design, hardware design, software development, electronic assembly, and clean environment integration.