With clear blue skies and scarcely any wind, Liverpool Middle School couldn’t have asked for better conditions to launch a high-altitude balloon May 29.
For the second year in a row, a team of LMS students launched their balloon — with “payload” containing a GPS device, flight computer and GoPro camera — from the middle school’s bus loop. Last year, the school won a “Space Kit” from by Utah-based company Canvas by Instruction and Project Lead the Way to launch the balloon. This year, the team was able to reuse some of the materials for the second balloon.
Science teacher Sara Pieklik, social studies teacher Micah Shippee and technology teacher Ray Finney set out with their own GPS, computers and phones to track the balloon’s progress. Students predicted that the balloon would land near Chittenango or Cazenovia.
“Last year, we landed north of Boonville, but this year we’re going to stay a little more local,” Pieklik said before the launch.
High-altitude balloons ascend into “near space,” the upper portion of the Earth’s atmosphere that has very little air — not enough for humans to survive without a pressurized suit, but too much for satellites to orbit the planet. These balloons are often used to gather weather data.
As it rises, the balloon expands and finally bursts once it reaches its peak altitude. Then the payload falls back to Earth.
Professor Georgios Mountrakis of SUNY ESF helped the five-student team calculate how much helium would be required to lift the balloon’s four-pound payload, which included the instruments and a parachute. The team used a luggage scale to measure a little more than four pounds of helium into the massive balloon — about 100 cubic feet of the gas.
“Last year the balloon went up really fast because they put too much helium,” said student Matthew Pare.
“The professor from ESF [determined] the proper scale so it wouldn’t launch too fast but not too slow,” said student Conor Fahy, whose father, Jason Fahy, is a STEAM-team science teacher at Pine Grove Middle School and was tracking his son’s balloon for his own class.
Pare and his classmate Lily Lemery explained that they used brightly colored duct tape in assembling the payload for visibility and acceleration control.
“When it fell down, we wanted to slow the acceleration rate,” Lemery said.
While preparing the balloon for launch, the students and teachers wore latex gloves.
“The oils from our hands … would have created a weak spot and it would have popped sooner,” Lemery said.
The balloon, the remains of which touched down in Morrisville a little before noon, reached a peak altitude of 30,369 meters. That’s 99,636 feet, or about 19 miles. Pieklik said the goal was to reach 30,000 meters or 100,000 feet.
The teachers hiked through some woods to reach the payload, which was stuck in a tree. Pieklik said they were prepared for a water rescue in case the balloon landed in nearby Cazenovia Lake.
Mr. Finney has a kayak,” she said.
The teachers tracked the balloon’s progress via GPS and posted updates to Instagram and Twitter. You can read their feed at hashtagr.co/lmshab2015.
