Weather Balloon

2nd Weather Balloon (from 2010)

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Back in 2010 I was part of a team that sent up a couple of weather balloons on a NC spacegrant. I posted about the first one (which flew straight into a thunderstorm) a long time ago, but with the recent weather balloons in the news, I decided to go back and look up my old photos from the second balloon.  In the pic above the yellow balloon was the first one, the green plot is of this second balloon.

We launched from Monroe Airport in NC and the path of the balloon followed the path of HWY 74, which is the main road in the area. There are a couple of good pics of Wadesboro, NC and Lake Tillery as well.

This one went about 75k ft. in elevation. You can *just* make out the curvature of the earth in some of the photos. We launched on a beautiful clear day and we were able to visually track the balloon’s full ascent AND descent. Fun times! Luckily it didn’t freeze on the ascent so we got some better pics. We stocked this one with a bunch of candy like last time and it was fun eating space candy again!

First Weather Balloon Launch Video and Google Earth File (Pt. 2)

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With the payload tested in a rocket, everything looked ready to go. I took it off the breadboard and built it onto a strip board PCB to make everything sturdy.

The next step was to create the payload box. The professor had done this before so he gave us tips on using foam core poster board, hot glue and HVAC tape. We chose to cover ours in mylar by applying a spray adhesive to the surface, then laying a sheet of mylar on it, and using credit cards to squeegee it flat as best as possible. The mylar was applied to the insides of the box before gluing, and the outside afterward.

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First Weather Balloon Payload Testing on a Model Rocket (Pt.1)

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Working with a professor at my college and Carolina Edge of Space in May of 2010 I, along with a small group of friends, sent a weather balloon 74,642 feet into the sky.  This post is mainly about the payload I designed, built and tested for the project.

This project was inspired by many seen recently online where students have been sending cheap payloads into the stratosphere. It started around December 2009 when we all met for the first time to discuss the project. It turns out that one of the professors in the Earth Sciences department focuses on remote sensing (gathering data about earth from satellites, etc.) who had done some weather balloon projects in the past. We all got together to discuss a possible launch.

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