/

High schools launch weather balloons

4 mins read
Students, aided by USM professors and graduate students, as well as NASA personnel, launched three weather balloons Wednesday morning.
Students, aided by USM professors and graduate students, as well as NASA personnel, launched three weather balloons Wednesday morning.

FARMINGTON – On an overcast Wednesday morning, bus loads of children weathered a chilly drizzle to send their payloads to the brink of space.

More than 100 students, grades 5 through 12, attended the second annual weather balloon launch at Prescott Field. The Maine Space Grant Consortium supported the event by helping schools launch their own experiments. The Maine Space Grant Consortium is a NASA sponsored group that encourages the continued strive of students toward engineer and science positions.

“It’s all about exposing students to NASA and projects that NASA is involved with,” Executive Director Terry Shehata said.

The balloons were outfitted with sensors to keep track of radiations levels, temperature, height, and global positioning units to aid in their recovery. Parachutes allow them to float back to the Earth. The students from each balloon’s school then go retrieve the payload wherever it lands, they’ve been known to fall in heavily wooded areas and swamps.

It was drizzling a little bit but that didn’t threaten the balloon launch, according to State Coordinator Sharon Eggleston

“Once [the balloons] get above the clouds, they’re good,” Eggleston said, with a chuckle. “The rain doesn’t affect the balloon, it just makes it a little miserable for us.”

Experiments were designed by students at Mt. Blue, Winthrop, and Westbrook High School. These experiments included plant seeds, small organisms such as brine shrimp, and micro-organisms such as an E-Coli cluster. Some of these samples were safely guarded inside of a box others were left on the outside to expose them to high degrees of radiation.

These sensors and experiment boxes were tethered to the balloons by students. Each school got one balloon and has a lot of fun with the project.

Eggleston says, “The altimeters have their scientific uses but the students always want to know if their balloon went higher.”

When the samples return to the Earth they will have been exposed to the radiations and conditions of space. Vic Serio of the Duboise Virology Lab at the University of Southern Maine said, “The only life we know is on Earth, so the only way we can predict life on other planets is to expose Earth organisms to space like conditions.”

According to Doug Hodum, who organizes the MBHS launch, the local school’s balloon landed “slightly to the north and west of Solon,” snagging on a tree about 50 feet above the ground.

“Despite initial valiant efforts, the recovery team was unable to remove the student payloads and a GPS beacon with the GoPro camera on it from the tree,” Hodum said Wednesday evening. “The burst balloon, parachute, a GPS beacon with the beeper and the beeline beacon were recovered.”

Dr. Rick Eason was able to recover the payloads by 7 p.m. that evening.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

1 Comment

  1. We’re fortunate to have a teacher like Doug Hodum in our District. Making an impact and inspiring young minds. Thank you, Mr. Hodum, you’re the kind of teacher who will be remembered long after high school. (I’m the parent of one of your former students.)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.