Eclipse-Ballooning 2017: The U of MN – Twin Cities Experience

The stratospheric ballooning team at the U of MN – Twin Cities started working on eclipse-ballooning in the fall of 2013, even before the Montana Space Grant announced their plan to organize a national Eclipse Ballooning Project. Our team promptly signed up to assist their effort, and have been heavily involved ever since. This presentation will discuss our eclipse-ballooning efforts and progress over the past 4 years. Our experiences include experimenting with a GoPro-based video-telemetry system (which ultimately was not as successful as Montana’s Raspberry-Pi-based system), adopting (then helping test, modify, and teach other teams to learn to use) the Montana telemetry system, practicing with up-range and down-range ground station placement, developing and testing passive anti-rotation devices and active camera-pointing devices to improve video quality, landing two eclipse-telemetry systems in Minnesota lakes one week before the eclipse (ouch!), flying five balloon stacks during the eclipse from near Grand Island, NE, and organizing/hosting AHAC 2017. We will also discuss ways in which we have already begun to use the telemetry equipment for non-eclipse balloon missions. The eclipse project has greatly expanded our HAB network and ballooning capabilities in multiple different directions, and will continue to strongly influence our stratospheric ballooning program for years to come

The “Stratospheric Cricket Keeper” – Developing a Simple“Life-Support” Payload for High-Altitude Balloon Missions

Exposure to the environmental conditions of “near-space” (AKA the stratosphere) is quickly fatal to nearly all forms of animal life. It is even challenging to build a sealable enclosure that can keep insects (crickets) alive through the dramatic and simultaneous pressure and temperature drops experienced during a high-altitude balloon mission. This poster describes the development of a rugged “cricket keeper” in which we were able to fly crickets to the stratosphere and, quoting the words of JFK, “return (them) safely to the earth!” This “life-support” payload had large windows (for the view!) and included Arduino-logged temperature and pressure sensors, an autonomous resistive heater circuit to maintain a comfortable internal temperature even when the outside temperature fell below -50° C, and a radio telemetry system by which internal conditions could be relayed to the ground and commands (to reset the Arduino or to query it for sensor data, for example) could be uplinked in real time. The status of the “crick-o-nauts” was monitored during the flight with a video camera and also assessed upon recovery. Due to the relatively short duration of the flight – about two hours – supplementary oxygen was not provided. Food was provided, but was optional for this flight duration. This educational payload project gave us new insights into some of the many of the challenges that NASA, and other space agencies, must overcome to provide life-support for human spaceflight missions

Eclipse-Ballooning 2017: The U of MN – Twin Cities Experience

The stratospheric ballooning team at the U of MN – Twin Cities started working on eclipse-ballooning in the fall of 2013, even before the Montana Space Grant announced their plan to organize a national Eclipse Ballooning Project. Our team promptly signed up to assist their effort, and have been heavily involved ever since. This presentation will discuss our eclipse-ballooning efforts and progress over the past 4 years. Our experiences include experimenting with a GoPro-based video-telemetry system (which ultimately was not as successful as Montana’s Raspberry-Pi-based system), adopting (then helping test, modify, and teach other teams to learn to use) the Montana telemetry system, practicing with up-range and down-range ground station placement, developing and testing passive anti-rotation devices and active camera-pointing devices to improve video quality, landing two eclipse-telemetry systems in Minnesota lakes one week before the eclipse (ouch!), flying five balloon stacks during the eclipse from near Grand Island, NE, and organizing/hosting AHAC 2017. We will also discuss ways in which we have already begun to use the telemetry equipment for non-eclipse balloon missions. The eclipse project has greatly expanded our HAB network and ballooning capabilities in multiple different directions, and will continue to strongly influence our stratospheric ballooning program for years to come