Project Archimedes

What started out as an idea from one student grew when the rest of the club desired to do a real science project. A weather balloon launch is a big undertaking, but the club worked together to research and designed our project. We also fell in love with the name Project Archimedes. Archimedes was a founding father of modern math and science, and Pacyber’s owl mascot is nicknamed Archie.

First, let me give you a quick overview to the science of a weather balloon. A large balloon will be inflated to about 5 feet in diameter with Helium and below that we will suspend our payload equipment. As the balloon rises in the atmosphere the air pressure outside the balloon will drop and the balloon will expand. Eventually, the balloon will expand to bursting – we hope at about 90,000ft. The payload will then parachute back to earth and be located by our team.

Our goal is to have a successful launch and to collect data to analyze. We will send up a flight computer with temperature and air pressure sensors. This data along with location (latitude, longitude, & altitude) will be relayed to the ground via ham radio. I have reached out to some friends and the local radio club and they will help us track and collect this data. We will also send up a camera for photos of earth receding on its way to the edge of space. We also hope to grow more high quality science projects out of this launch.

Pre-Launch - Research lots of research and the building of the payload to hold all the telemetry equipment.

This was the projected path for the balloon the day prior to launch. It was a computer program that took forecasted weather and wind predictions as well as our performance predictions and created the above path

Launch Day - Lots of details and lots of help.

Thanks to the following Science club kids that were able to make it that day. DJ, Faith, Josiah, Sarah, Michelle, Quarrie, Ethan, Kyle, Tanner.

Thanks to the Newspaper club and editor Sarah.

Thanks to the Photography club Sarah, Adiella, Renee, Rachel and moderator Ms. Mangan

Thanks to Jane Camp and PaCyber's support.

Huge thanks to the Pittsburgh Zoo and the Western Amateur Radio Community, especially Cory, Joe & Bruce.

This was the path of the weather balloon.

Quick Facts:

  • It was in the air for about 2hrs 45min (about 2 hrs up and 45min down)
  • The highest altitude was 101,949ft (19.3miles)
  • The coldest temperature that it experienced was -50*C (-58*F)
  • It landed 17miles away in Natrona Heights (in the median of Highway 28)
  • Unfortunately, the camera battery only captured photos up to 52,000ft before running out of battery.
Live_launch.mp4

There are many more pictures and complete data available on google drive. Also, if you have any questions, please contact me at erin.butler@pacyber.org





Recovery pictures at the bottom of this website.

Don't mind the time stamp - it reset when we changed batteries. : )