We Have Liftoff

By Cathy Lambert
Published June 7, 2007
The Fall River Spirit

Kuss Middle School, a NASA Explorer School, held its first ever weather balloon launch June 1st. It was held at Silvia School at meridian Street. Students from Kuss Middle School, the Greene School, and also Silvia School Were in attendance.

The balloon tail was attached to a parachute for the landing and also eight pods. Five of the pods were designed by the students and contained potato chips, each packed differently to test what materials would withstand the trip, two of the pods contained GPS tracing devices and the final a camera to get photographs of the balloon’s flight.

The project also included students tracking the balloon as it traveled from ‘Mission Control’ which was also set up at the Silvia School. They followed along and kept in constant communication with people located in Buzzards Bay, the projected landing spot for the balloon, and also with students from Boston University who acted as a chase team and tracked the balloon from a car and boat.

The launch had a lot of help form StratoStar Systems, a company founded by Jason Krueger and located in Upland, Indiana. Jason said, “The high-altitude balloon can expand up to 30 feet but when inflated on the ground it will be between 6 to 8 feet.” If inflated incorrectly the balloon may go as far as Nantucket.

The Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium whose director is retired astronaut D. Jeff Hoffman, also helped with the project. Hoffman, who has made five trips into space, told the students to “reach for the stars.” He also told of different times he used balloon launches in his studies of space.

There was also a special patch designed for the launch. To choose the patch, the school held a contest and receive about 30 entries. The winning patch entry came from Tyler Machodo. Every-one who attended the launch received the special patch.

Other events of the day included a design and launching of rockets made by students. The students also made inclinometers that they will use to measure the height of that the rockets traveled.

At about 10:20 am, students Kevin franca and Kaylee Penland from the Ham Radio Club learned that the balloon went down before expected somewhere in the Copicut Reservoir near Freetown. The balloon will still be retrieved and the data collected ruing the fight still used to understand why it went down sooner than expected.