Overview of the content

Ballooning

Through this introductory lesson, you will learn about ballooning and its vocabulary, such as envelope and lifting gas. You will receive some historical context, including balloons-carrying-people dating back to 1780s and airships of the early 1900s as well as current types of balloons/ballooning: hot air, weather/rubber, zero-pressure, super-pressure.

You will be introduced to the pros and cons of lifting gas options: hot air, helium, hydrogen and learn about Tethered vs free ballooning and Free vs powered/controlled ballooning.

We will eventually narrow the focus to stratospheric weather ballooning with preliminary information on payload development and flying the balloons, including trajectory predictions, launching, gps tracking (and other data telemetry) and recovery (if called for).

NEBP Engineering Track

This leesson also highlights the technical engineering systems used to safely and successfully capture real-time video and data from a high-altitude weather balloon during the October 14, 2023 annular eclipse and the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse.  The engineering POD leads and their students have been carefully designing, documenting and testing the systems that will be distributed to the participating forty engineering teams.

System components include

  • an Iridium tracking system,
  • a cutdown system,
  • a tracking ground station,
  • a streaming video system,
  • a dual camera system providing 360 degree views,
  • a helium vent valve system for latex balloons,
  • zero pressure balloons,
  • temperature sensors,
  • pressure sensors and
  • precision GPS sensors.

Software to support the system components include

  • a real time tracking website, and
  • tracking ground station code, dual camera and streaming code, along with the embedded code.

Participating teams will learn the systems and have an opportunity to create their own payload.

My STEM Career

Lastly, the project includes many opportunities to grow the skills that will support your future plans—whether that is going to college or earning a graduate degree; or entering the world of work — perhaps in industry, the military, a government agency, a non-profit or as an entrepreneur.

This lesson introduces the concept of a career portfolio and offers templates and ideas for starting one TODAY.

Learning objectives

After completing this lesson students will:

  • bullet
  • bullet
  • Undestand the concept of starting (or continuing to add to) a career portfolio
  • Choose a format for your career portfolio and log your first entry

Ballooning video content

Overview of Lighter Than Air Ballooning - by Dr. James Flaten, Minnesota Space Grant Consortium [YouTube, 20 minutes]

Introduction to Stratospheric Weather Ballooning - by Dr. James Flaten, Minnesota Space Grant Consortium [YouTube, 11 minutes]

The NEBP engineering track

Learn about all the hardware, software and systems used by the engineering track [28 slides]

 

Readings / articles

What is NASA SciAct? [Web page]

 

Class activity

Ballooning and payloads

During class, you can inflate a small rubber balloon (and maybe a mylar balloon too) with lifting gas and practice measuring lift, sealing it, and tethering it.

You can also possibly measure lift vs time (over the course of ~24 hours) to document the fact that helium leaks through the balloon envelope, though probably not fast enough to bother the 2-3 hour flights of the NEBP project.

If a small camera is available - not necessarily even a telemetry camera - use the tethered balloon to lift a camera to get people to start thinking about the view (and the unstable platform).

Career skills

Discussion question

Homework / Extended learning

Here is where the career portfolio piece can go -- need templates, etc

 

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