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.