(Lander, WY) – Three student teams from Pathfinder High School launched a high-altitude weather balloon on Tuesday, November 19, which consisted of payloads they designed as state science fair projects.
The launch was done in conjunction with the NASA-funded Wyoming Space Grant Consortium, and was assisted/led by PhD student Philip Bergmaier.
The Wyoming Space Grant Consortium sponsors education and research programs throughout Wyoming, in support of NASA missions.
The Consortium programs include “research fellowships and internships for students at the University of Wyoming and Wyoming community colleges, scholarship programs for community college students in STEM majors, grants for college and university faculty, and educational resources and programs for Wyoming K-12 students and teachers.”
“I am incredibly excited about this launch opportunity and eager to see the amazing data our students collect,” Pathfinder science teacher Sam Hartpence shared with County 10.
The student teams and project payloads included Rokko Antelope and Branden Metz, whose project is designed to measure particulates, with particular interest in measuring atmospheric particulates caused by this Fall’s Pack Trail Fire.
Jasmine Marcus and Daniel Cox’s project will be “indirectly measuring ozone as a function of altitude,” which is something Hartpence noted/joked that he “failed to do when (he) worked for Montana Space Grant Consortium 20 some odd years ago.”
The third project was completed by Kayden Higginbotham, Hunter McIntyre and Emmett Visher, which functioned as a stabilizer for the entire balloon payload, which was necessary because, as Hartpence described, the weather balloons move quite “violently” during their ascent.
Because conditions for launches like these have to be just right, the date was moved from November 12 to the 19, and when it was time for the balloon to depart on Tuesday morning, students also got to learn that even when all systems appear to be “a go,” there may still be setbacks.
Sensors on the load stabilization project appeared to be no match for the cold Wyoming morning air.
“Ultimately, the working theory is that the temperatures were too cold for their servos, or for their gyro,” Hartpence later explained after a last-minute sensor replacement failed to do the trick. “They had been tweaking their project and making things more stable and more reliable for weeks. They had a working concept for quite a while really, so it was surprising to see them have struggles this morning.”
“They will evaluate their data and the footage and potentially revise their design.”
Hartpence also shared that there were other instances of resilience in the face of setbacks during the lead-up to the launch as well.
“Rokko and Branden initially had a really hard time programming because of some complicated coding libraries and incomparable communication protocols,” Hartpence commented.
“Jasmine has really had the hardest times. Suppliers messed up her order, and sent her a defective sensor, then she had a bout of illness. Daniel Cox wasn’t even part of her group initially, but stepped in when she missed some school to keep her project going.”
Ultimately, the students had a successful launch (the payload successfully landed on BLM land east of Riverton after a close to three hour flight), and County 10 will touch base with Hartpence in the following days to find out what kind of data the students’ projects collected after all was said and done.
