Spherical Panoramic Image Payload Design for Stratospheric Ballooning

The 2017 total solar eclipse inspired innovation in design and implementation in stratospheric ballooning techniques and payloads to fully document the unique near-space experience. The Arkansas BalloonSAT team, as part of the Eclipse Ballooning Project, designed and fabricated a spherical panoramic image payload using computer aided design (CAD) software to capture images of the eclipse from the high altitude balloon. The light, durable, and water resistant mount consisted of a polyurethane-coated UV-resin based enclosure that housed six Hero 4 Session GoPro cameras, and a relative inertial measurement unit (IMU) PCB equipped with GPS. The cameras’ lenses faced radially outward on the six faces of a cube. The IMU/GPS PCB system computed the absolute orientation of the cameras, which allows the time-lapse pictures to be stitched together into a relatively stable spherical video. The batteries for this system experienced a voltage drop during flight as the payload temperature dropped below -60 degrees Celsius resulting in an auto-shutdown procedure disabling the system before eclipse totality. Future designs for this model will include a temperature regulation or insulation system to prevent this voltage drop

Observing the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse in the skies above Central Missouri, USA

We report the work and findings of Arkansas BalloonSAT in participating in the 2017 Eclipse Ballooning Project. Arkansas BalloonSAT was the site-team for Missouri and launched a high altitude balloon from Fulton High School in Fulton, MO an hour prior to totality. This balloon reached an apogee of 24 kilometers shortly after floating for one minute in the moon\u27s umbra. In addition to live-streaming video from one payload as part of the Eclipse Ballooning Project, our mission included carrying a scientific payload and educational outreach. This report will summarize those efforts and include an examination of balloon kinematics with the cooling effect of the moon\u27s umbra and aircraft-balloon interaction. We further discuss developments in the system to minimize payload size for future eclipse studies

Pore Accessibility in Amorphous Solid Water

The porous nature of amorphous solid water (ASW) can significantly effect the chemical evolution of any planetary or astrophysical surface it forms on due to its ability to trap and retain volatiles. The amount of volatiles that can enter an ASW grain or mantle is limited by how interconnected the pores are to each other and to the exterior surface. Previous laboratory studies examined the interconnectivity of ASW pores in thin ASW films relevant to ice mantles on interstellar grains. Here, we investigate to what extent the interconnectivity of pores and subsequent gas absorption properties of ASW change as one moves toward thicker samples (up to ∼10 ^19 H _2 O cm ^−2 or ∼4 μ m) more representative of icy material found in the outer solar system. We find that for all film thicknesses studied, the internal pores are accessible from the sample’s surface, and the amount of gas needed to fill the pores increases linearly with the ASW column density. This linear relation supports that the interconnectivity to the surface will persist in ices that are much thicker than those we were able to study, suggesting that the amount of contaminant gas trapped within ASW can significantly alter the chemical evolution of a variety of ASW-rich surfaces in the outer solar system

Spherical Panoramic Image Payload Design for Stratospheric Ballooning

The 2017 total solar eclipse inspired innovation in design and implementation in stratospheric ballooning techniques and payloads to fully document the unique near-space experience. The Arkansas BalloonSAT team, as part of the Eclipse Ballooning Project, designed and fabricated a spherical panoramic image payload using computer aided design (CAD) software to capture images of the eclipse from the high altitude balloon. The light, durable, and water resistant mount consisted of a polyurethane-coated UV-resin based enclosure that housed six Hero 4 Session GoPro cameras, and a relative inertial measurement unit (IMU) PCB equipped with GPS. The cameras’ lenses faced radially outward on the six faces of a cube. The IMU/GPS PCB system computed the absolute orientation of the cameras, which allows the time-lapse pictures to be stitched together into a relatively stable spherical video. The batteries for this system experienced a voltage drop during flight as the payload temperature dropped below -60 degrees Celsius resulting in an auto-shutdown procedure disabling the system before eclipse totality. Future designs for this model will include a temperature regulation or insulation system to prevent this voltage drop

A Possible Explanation for the Presence of Crystalline H2O-ice on Kuiper Belt Objects

Dataset associated with the article "A possible explanation for the presence of crystalline H2O-ice on Kuiper Belt objects" which can be read at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2020.113943. A small error was discovered in the readme file which has been corrected as of July 27, 2020