Stratospheric Organism and Radiation Analyzer

Background

High Altitude Student Platform

The High Altitude Student Platform (HASP) is a program designed to help undergraduate and graduate students gain experience in scientific research through the planning, designing, construction, and management of payloads. Each university is allowed one payload that must strive to achieve self-assigned objectives. While most participating groups are from within the United States, the program is open to universities around the world, providing the opportunity to meet and collaborate with a variety of teams. The program cycles annually, and is hosted by the Louisiana Space Consortium and supported by the NASA Balloon Program Office. More information can be found on the official HASP website at http://laspace.lsu.edu/hasp/.

Maiden Flight

The University of Houston (UH) participated for the first time in 2017. The team began with undergraduate students Samuel Morelos, Fre'Etta Brooks, and Steven Oliver under faculty mentor Dr. Andrew Renshaw. They developed the idea of a payload that collects stratospheric microorganisms and records environmental and radiation data with the purpose of finding connections between the microbes' DNA and the environment in which they live. This payload is what is now known as the Stratospheric Organism and Radiation Analyzer, or SORA. The team was officially accepted as part of the HASP program at the beginning of 2017. As the year went on, the team grew larger, peaking with twelve members. The design of the payload went through many changes, but kept the same underlying principle of environmental and radiation sensing and microorganism collection. Following the success of SORA's maiden flight, the team applied for HASP 2018 and was welcomed back for another flight. SORA's design and success captured the attention of the HASP project coordinators and the University of Houston Physics Department.

2018

Purpose

Due to the success of SORA, the team eagerly applied for another flight. The 2018 payload, tentatively dubbed SORA 2.0, will be similar in concept to the original SORA payload. The main goal of SORA 2.0 is to improve upon the original systems as well as add a new passive astrobiology collection system.

Improving Upon Last Year

Improvements for the SORA 2.0 payload include but are not limited to the following: a variable shutter-rate for the MiniPIX radiation detector, an additional vacuum pump to collect microorganisms, a passive astrobiology system that will behave as a sticky "net" as the payload travels through the atmosphere, optimized and organized electrical systems, and alternative microorganism analysis.

One of the biggest problems the teams faced during the 2017 flight was a lack of specialized duties; most team members were working on multiple aspects of the payload at once, resulting in a thinly spread workforce. A priority for the 2018 flight is to recruit more members from a diverse selection of disciplines. This will ensure the continuation of the UH HASP program, make the UH HASP program more of a multi-discipline effort, and allow individual team members to deeply work on specific tasks.

Timeline Highlights

January - March:

Development and finalization of design
Procure funding

April - June:

Testing individual electrical and radiation subsystems
Begin payload construction
Begin integrating subsystems

July:

Further integration of subsystems
Finalize payload construction
Integration with HASP at NASA facility in Palestine, Texas

August:

Finalize and polish the payload
Lift-off from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico

September - November:

Begin data analysis
Begin writing HASP scientific report
Finalize data analysis

December:

Finish and submit HASP scientific report

What HASP Does for its Students

The program is deeply enriching and provides a great research opportunity for every student no matter their year. For freshman, it's an introduction to the scientific community and its formalities. For seniors, it's a chance to catch the attention of a potential employer.

Internships

One of our members, Kevin Portillo, was offered an internship at NASA's Joint-Station LAN Laboratory where they manage payload operations, networks, communication, and telemetry on board the ISS. Thanks to the HASP mission, Kevin was able to bring in prior experience to the job and exceed entry level expectations.
Reed Masek received an internship at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karslruhe, Germany for the summer of 2018. During the internship, Reed worked underneath a Ph.D student to design a hybrid DAQ for a hybrid scintillation and radio detector to detect cosmic ray induced air showers.

Conferences

Fre'Etta Brooks gave a poster presentation at Rice University for the American Physical Society Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics on January 14, 2017. (http://www.aps.org/programs/women/workshops/cuwip.cfm).
Samuel Garcia Morelos presented at the Bulletin of the American Physical Society in Dallas, Texas on October 20, 2017. He gave an oral presentation. (https://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/TSF17/Session/E5.3).
A small group consisting of Steven Oliver, Andrew Walker, Kevin Portillo, and Reed Masek presented at the 2018 Joint Spring Meeting of the Texas Sections of APS, AAPT, and Zone 13 of the SPS in Stephenville, Texas. For the conference, the team prepared a poster presentation for the organized poster sessions. Additionally, the team attended several enrichment talks regarding various fields and studies of Physics. (https://www.tarleton.edu/physics/AAPTConference/index.html).

Presentations

Steven Oliver has presented several times, of which include the following:

UH Undergraduate Research Day on October 12, 2017 (http://www.uh.edu/honors/undergraduate-research/events/urday2017/).
STEM Life at UH Presentation at UH Gathering of the Eagles STEM Symposium on November 4, 2017 (https://www.uh.edu/news-events/stories/2016/November/110416EaglesSTEM.php).
College Students in STEM Presentation at Mars Rover Celebration on January 27, 2018 (http://www.marsrover.org/)

Steven Oliver and Fre'Etta Brooks both presented at the Society of Physics Students UH Chapter General Meeting on February 15, 2018 (http://sps.phys.uh.edu/).

Google Sites

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