Today was our final launch day in Palmdale, CA and gave us our best flight yet. Our balloon reached 95,000 ft, and followed its predicted trajectory perfectly…almost. Surface winds were higher than originally predicted and the balloon traveled past its projected landing site and landed precisely at the top of a mountain. Jack, Tim, and… Read More
Two balloon launches in one day! Today, we launched at 0700 as well as at 1430. Jack, Tim, and Bianca woke up at 4:00am to prepare for the 0700 launch (timelapse) and were able to catch the sunrise as we set up at our launch site.… Read More
Most weather balloons are launched from the same location every day, so researchers in those locations often have a building of some sort that they use for filling the balloon before moving it outside. The building provides shelter from the wind so the balloon is not flailing around during the fill. Since we are moving… Read More
The first launch of the campaign saw temperatures of nearly 109 degrees Fahrenheit! We learned very quickly how much stress these temperatures put on our balloons, and worked our way through multiple heat-related software and data logging glitches. In the end, the balloon burst earlier (lower altitude) than the expected 95,000 ft., but we were… Read More
The AirCore is an innovative, yet simple, atmospheric sampling system that can sample the atmosphere from the middle stratosphere down to the surface. It is made up of a long piece of tubing, usually wound into a compact coil, and is launched on a balloon designed to go to approximately 100,000 feet above the… Read More
Our first stop is Palmdale, California. Tim Newberger and Jack Higgs spent Saturday and Sunday driving the AirCore chase vehicle and all the equipment from Boulder over the Rockies and through western Colorado, across Utah, through the northwestern corner of Arizona and the southern tip of Nevada before finally rolling into California and then Palmdale. … Read More
