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Aggie High-Altitude Balloon Club visits Alaska for study
Project Aurora was an activity organized by the TAMU High-Altitude Balloon Club in conjunction Houston-based Project Aether Group. As a part of the project, students launched helium-filled weather balloons capable of reaching 100,000 ft (20 miles) altitude into the Arctic sky to observe the northern lights and make various measurements. The TAMU team consisted of 9 undergraduates -- Rahul Venkatraman (AERO), Kimberley Webster (AERO), Megan Woodring (AERO), Christopher Cantu (AERO), Nicholas Ortiz (AERO), Lisa Malone (ARO), Celica Perez (Bio), Dylan McGarry (MEEN) and Travis Dawsey (ENTC-MMT); two graduate students – Frans Ebersohn (AERO) and John Guthery (AERO). The projected was coordinated and supervised by Dr. Sharath Girimaji of Aerospace Engineering. Dr. Girimaji and the undergraduate team traveled to Fairbanks on April 5th and returned on 10th. The graduate students spent two weeks, from March 31 – April 14, with the Project Aether team.
Each flight carried a payload of about 4 pounds and was tracked using Spot-GPS. The ascent time to 100K ft is about 2 hrs. As the best Aurora viewing was at 3:00 am, most of the launches were between midnight and 1:00 am. Five successful launches were completed, and four balloons were recovered. One balloon was lost due to tracking mal-function. The project consisted of six missions:
- Standard Atmosphere: to measure and create tables and graphs of Temperature, Pressure, and Density vs. Altitude;
- Sky Loiter: to increase the balloon loitering time at a certain altitudes inside to measurements;
- Sounds of the Aurora: to record and document aurora acoustics and underlying physics;
- Life in the Aurora: to examine mutations in bacteria at the edge of space in the aurora;
- Stardust Capture: to capture particles propagating in the aurora using an aerogel similar to that used by NASA;
- Colors of the Aurora: spectroscopy analysis to see what elements are prevalent in the Aurora.
The Texas A&M High Altitude Balloon Club (HABC) is one part of the recently started Buoyant Flight Laboratory in the Aerospace Engineering Department. The purpose of this Laboratory is two-fold. First, and foremost, the objective is to provide undergraduate students experiential learning opportunities with one of the most benign forms of flight – buoyant flight. The second purpose is to use the balloons as in-air laboratories to perform various experiments. Thus, balloons can serve as platforms for research and development of flight control strategies, remote sensing and atmospheric measurements.
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- • Aggie High-Altitude Balloon Club visits Alaska for study Posted on: Friday 05/18/2012
- • 2 Students win at the AIAA Region IV Student Paper Conference Posted on: Wednesday 05/16/2012
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- • Dr. Lagoudas announced as new Senior Associate Dean for Research in the Dwight Look College of Engineering Posted on: Wednesday 05/09/2012
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- • Chemical engineering honors spring 2012 graduates Posted on: Friday 05/18/2012
- • Materials graduate student Sean Gibbons awarded Sandia/Texas A&M fellowship Posted on: Friday 05/18/2012
- • Petroleum engineering recognizes outstanding graduates Posted on: Friday 05/18/2012
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