Taking science to new heights
Fairbanksans work together to create cheap platform for high-altitude experiments
Published Monday, June 9, 2008
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Doing research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks can cost about $120.
On May 10, A collaboration between the Alaska Space Grant Program and the Arctic Amateur Radio Club launched a high altitude balloon with payload containers carrying two amateur radio signallers and a digital camera. The package reached a peak height of 95,327 feet before the balloon burst and the payloads parachuted back to Earth, landing almost seven miles away from the launch site.
Neal Brown, former director of the Alaska Space Grant Program and former manager of Poker Flats Research Range, said after the balloon came down, all of the equipment was recovered in working order and could be reused. The only losses were the $60 balloon — which burst due to the low pressure at 95,000 feet — and $60 of helium used to inflate the balloon.
“This launch was about learning how to do things,” Brown said.
Named the Balloon Experiment and Research Program or B.E.A.R., the program will allow university students to design payloads and use balloons to run experiments and record observations at altitudes that would otherwise require expensive rockets. Brown said he hopes to allow high school students to prepare and launch their own payloads in the future.
Brown and Denise Thorsen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UAF, attended a workshop in 2004 to learn how to use high-altitude balloons to collect data. The workshop also included information about how to get in contact with local amateur radio clubs because an amateur radio license is needed to transmit telemetry from the balloon.
Dan Wietchy of the Fairbanks-based Arctic Amateur Radio Club was in the process of planning his own balloon launch when Brown and Thorsen approached the club.
“I was actually going to put a balloon in the air, so it was serendipity that intervened,” Wietchy said.
All three payload containers were built by Wietchy after he explored a number of material options, including particle board and lightweight sheet metal.
“I started with an insulated lunch box from Wal-Mart,” he said.
Wietchy needed a good balance between weight and durability and finally settled on wax-impregnated cardboard. After finding a suitable material, Wietchy designed the containers. His design had to be just big enough to hold the payload.
“It had to be as small as possible for as light as possible,” Wietchy said.
The launch’s total payload weighed 4 pounds, which required less intervention from the Federal Aviation Administration. Brown said anything more than 4 pounds would require extensive contact with the FAA, including coordinating with the organization during the actual launch. For B.E.A.R.’s launch, he said researchers only had to tell the FAA the purpose, place and date of the launch beforehand.
“With 4 pounds or less, it’s a lot easier,” Brown said.
The payload included a digital camera that took a photo every two minutes.
“I was just astonished. Those pictures were amazing,” Brown said.
The camera captured images from 73,000 feet in the air, and the pictures included views of Eielson Air Force Base, Tanana Flats and Mount McKinley. Wietchy said he wasn’t surprised by the tracking equipment’s performance but was taken aback by the images the camera captured.
“They were absolutely spectacular photos — I actually held my breath when I saw them,” he said.
After the balloon popped, it took 35 minutes for the payload to hit the ground with the help of a parachute. It landed less than seven miles away from the launching point, a feat unique to Fairbanks. Twice a year, winds above Fairbanks are virtually calm, a natural occurrence called a “turnaround.” When Brown and Thorsen tried a similar balloon launch at their workshop without the turnaround, their payload was found 80 miles from the launch site.
“It was a chase to find it,” Brown said.
The May 10 launch was recovered four days later by members of the radio club, and Brown said the club’s dedication to B.E.A.R. was extremely important to the success of the launch.
Although he retired from UAF in May, Brown plans to stay involved with the B.E.A.R program and said the program goes beyond results.
“The motivation is to provide opportunities for kids in college and high school,” Brown said.
Community Discussion
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For the rest of us who would love to see those photos of Fairbanks from 95,000 feet, can you put those pictures up on a web site and post the web address here on this blog?
Great job- guys.
http://www.bear.437am.com/ is the web site for the balloon launch effort. Dan is posting pictures to it.
Neal
Great web photos...way to go.
Here's a site you can visit for more photos;
http://www.bear.437am.com/
Oops, sorry I didn't notice Neal's posting.
Thanks for the pictures Neal!
Wow! Nearly eight decades after Auguste Piccard’s first manned balloon flight to the stratosphere two researchers from UAF and people from the Arctic Amateur Radio Club launched a simple stratospheric balloon with a cheap digital camera as payload to make “history” and got a front page article. This is amazing to me.
The use of stratospheric balloons for high altitude observations is an old hat in aeronomy. Usually these balloons are much bigger in size than that used by Neal Brown, Dan Wietchy and Denise Thorsen. This bigger size however is only related to the payload request. A digital camera is by far not comparable with a much heavier equipment to measure, for instance, gas concentrations at high altitudes. Of course, the pictures received are nice, but one can use Google Earth to take a view over Interior Alaska. I wonder what kind of science this BEAR project should be.
Neal Brown stated that he hopes to allow high school students to prepare and launch their own payloads in the future. On the other hand, he and Denise Thorsen attended a workshop in 2004 to learn how to use high-altitude balloons to collect data. Folks, believe it or not, but this kind of data transmission is old stuff, too. Especially Denise Thorsen should be familiar with such data transmission techniques without attending a workshop. I wonder who has paid for that.
My kids are interested to enroll at UAF for studying mechanical and electrical engineering. After reading this article I am convinced that UAF is not the best institution to earn a degree for preparing the future.
Hey skewt: What have you accomplished lately? I think this article is uplifting and I don't see how it inspired your downer comments unless you're jealous or have an ax to grind.
Any project that involves students in significant research experience is all right in my book.
yeah skewt, don't be a buzzkill man. this is interesting stuff on the cheap.
The UAF is an amazing institution of higher learning.
At about eleven years of age my neighbor and I conducted a similiar experiment. The objective of our research was the effects of extreme altitude on a frog.
Materials; one stolen condom, helium from my dads heli-arc bottle and a frog.
About 2 hours elasped time from conception of the idea until the frog was soaring out of site.
Results; could not locate frog.
Skewt, the engineering degrees at UAF are comparable to those out of state (with an excellent hire rate), it is some of the other programs that get the short end.
Sorry, guys, but in science it is important to perform cutting edge research. The former director of the Geophysical Institute, Juan Roederer, already carried out stratospheric balloon soundings in Antarctica 50 years ago when he studied cosmic rays (see http://www.agu.org/inside/awards/bios/ro...).
Your kids should be looking into schools that focus on reading comprehension. If they have your genes, they'll miss the point of the article, too.
Are you aware that GeoPhys & Engineering are in different departments? Both UAF engineering grad students & undergrads place in national competitions on a regular basis. Anyways, it is a good thing your kids get to pick their school & not you. Then regardless of where they pick, they will be getting the education that suits them.
Sorry Skewt, you're missing the point and you probably don't have a lot of accomplishments of your own to merit even a footnote in the News-Miner. From the article (did you read it?):
“This launch was about learning how to do things,” Brown said.
You're comparing a project that Roederer was a part of several years after he got his Ph.D. with a project designed to let undergraduate and high school students gain experience with upper atmosphere research. I doubt that Roederer has the last word on upper-atmosphere studies with balloons.
Skewt I feel sorry for your kids. There is nothing wrong with learning the old try and true methods and then take that what they learned and improve. We will find that just maybe doing thing the old fashion way is the best and cheapest.
My hat is off to those who work with kids to urge them to use their imaginations.
Another way to look at it. This group spent only $150 to get the same quality of picture NASA spent millions to put up a satelite to take the same photos. Kind of reminds me of when NASA spent millions to find a writing instrument that would work in space, Russia already had one it was called a pencil.
Hello emo,
of course, I read Brown's statement. This statement is clearly the point. They try to learn it. But what is the purpose of this learning? I have the impression that they did it just for fun because a payload of 100 pounds, for instance, needs a much bigger balloon and much more flight security measures than such a small one. Many years ago, I saw the launch of a weather balloon. Brown's balloon looks like such a weather balloon. A weather man told us that such balloons are launched every day at many places.
Please make a web search and you may find a lot of information about stratospheric balloon observations. I already did it, and I was amused to find that Juan Roederer, the former director of the Geophysical Institute, launched such balloons 50 years ago. Believe it or not the payload of his equipment for measuring cosmic rays was much heavier than a digital camera.
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