TECHRISE STUDENT CHALLENGE

Developed by NASA's Flight Opportunities program

Balloon launched on 8/12/2024, from Page Airport, Arizona, US

Purpose of the flight and payload description

The objective of the flight -sponsored by NASA's Flight Opportunities program under the TechRise Student Challenge- was to give student teams a chance to design and build science and technology experiments for flight on balloons, enabling them to collect data on a variety of space exploration and Earth observation experiments in areas such as remote sensing, climate, and human health to name a few.

In the image at left we can see a basic scheme of the gondola that hosted the student experiments (click for more details). The gondola, developed specially for the program by World View was capable to accomodate up to 30 experiments. After selected, each team receives a Flight Box with a size of 10 x 10 x 20 centimeters that they must use to install the experiment to be flown which can't exceed 1 kilogram of weight. Power for each experiment is provided by an onboard power source (9 volts and 1.5 ampers) and data communication is based on a serial interface. No Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular phones, or RF communications are allowed as they can interfere with the balloon onboard systems or could affect nearby experiments.

The experiments can contain up to 150 ml of any non-hazardous liquid. For those experiments related to biology only seeds or plant substrates (e.g., soils, artificial soils) are allowed. No lasers are allowed onboard if these elements transmit outside of the experiment, only ones permitted are sensors that use internal lasers to detect particles or gather other data (e.g., PM/air quality sensors). These are allowed as long as students are not directly interacting with them.

Each box is attached to the gondola frame. No insultaion is available so each device is exposed to the environment, including ambient atmospheric temperature/pressure.This flight hosted 30 experiments from students from high schools of all the United States.

Streaming of the balloon preparatives and launch

Details of the balloon flight

Balloon launched on: 8/12/2024 at 14:20 utc
Launch site: Page Airport, Arizona, US  
Balloon launched by: World View Enterprises
Balloon manufacturer/size/composition: Zero Pressure Balloon  
Flight identification number: N138WV
End of flight (L for landing time, W for last contact, otherwise termination time): 8/12/2024 at 20:00 UTC
Balloon flight duration (F: time at float only, otherwise total flight time in d:days / h:hours or m:minutes - ): 5 h 40 m
Landing site: 10 km E of Beaver Dam, Arizona, US

External references

Images of the mission

View of the gondola holding the 30 student payloads The gondola being readied for the flight Balloon inflation    

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