On Saturday morning at 9 am on March 2nd, 2024, we set up for student experiment payload practice flights in preparation for the total solar eclipse. This marked flights #86 and #87 for the NASA Nebraska Space Grant team.

We did not fly any of the the equipment for the NEBP streaming video balloon. Because we were not using the vent system and the Iridium, Derrick showed the students how to prepare the neck of the balloon “old school.” We have a piece of PVC in the neck of the balloon and secure the lines to the parachute with zip ties. We also used a simple fill tube rather than the quick connect version for filling the balloon through the vent.

For the tracking on the first balloon, we used the StratoStar SatCom system and an APRS beacon. This also had the Insta360 camera for testing and a solar panel experiment on board.

This was the second balloon with two experiment payload boxes – a UV sensor experiment and one prepared with paint in balloons for a combination engineering/art project. For the tracking on the second balloon, we used two SPOT locators, one provided by the national NEBP and one from the AXP club.

The first balloon was recovered in a suburb in Papillion by Derrick and Kendra. It landed not far from the sidewalk and was just a few miles from Michael and Kendra’s house.

The second balloon was recovered by a student recovery team in a field in Iowa.

Besides the traditional solar system scaled model, you can use other models to compare sizes of astronomical objects.

For example, the following images were of a scaled model originally made to be the Sun (tiny yellow ball) and the Sun when it turns into a red giant (big red ball). There is a tiny magnet in the small yellow ball and another one in the side of the big red ball to keep them together.

This next model is of the relative sizes of the main sequence stars.

The following is an artistic interpretation of the Milky Way, printed on both sides with cotton batting inside and coated with a waterproof sealer to make it solid. This makes it possible to feel the shape of the spiral arms.

Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko 3-D printed in white.

Link to 3D Print file: https://sci.esa.int/web/rosetta/-/54728-shape-model-of-comet-67p

The Moon that I had printed was not as good of a quality of print. It was smaller and you can see the layers of string. Also the bottom was rough because the raft (base) it needed to print had to be cut off.

Cosmic Fireworks: Tips for Hosting Large Star Parties

Space Crafts #2 – Fireballs

Photo of crescent Venus and Jupiter approximately 1/2 degree apart by Michael Sibbernsen from Papillion, NE.

MCC’s Teacher Tuesday Spotlight features Kendra and the NASA Nebraska High Altitude Ballooning program. http://mccneb.edu/news/2014-15/kendra_sibbersen.html

Check out our data from the MCC flight on 3/28/15:

http://nearspacescience.com/data-from-mcc-flight-32815/

Photo by Michael Sibbernsen

This is a photo that Michael took with a 92 mm f-5.5 APO telescope using a 5MP Starshoot CCD color imager. It was 10 frames stacked using Lynkeos image processing software.

This does not have anything to do with ballooning, but here is a link to a funny article talking about what is happening with the 60 Days of Science that Michael has been facilitating at the Strategic Air and Space Museum.

Miss Nebraska 2013 to assist with shark dissection this weekend just because

http://www.omaha.com/article/20140306/GO/140309111/1707#.Uxsm-NzHJNY

Follow us on Twitter: nearspacescience @nearspacesci

We would like to acknowledge and endorse the following companies who provided  the specialized equipment we used for the Husker-game HAB launch.

StratoStar

http://www.stratostar.net

For the last three years, StratoStar and Jason Kreuger (President) have been an immeasurable help with the development of the ballooning programs for NASA Nebraska Space Grant and the Strategic Air and Space Museum. Without his assistance, as well as the high-quality, high-reliability HAB equipment StratoStar produces, we quite literally would not have gotten off the ground. Our primary experiment balloon for the Husker game launch and chase used the entire StratoSAT Elite Package.

Byonics

http://www.byonics.com

Primary and back-up tracking for the 2^nd balloon, and back-up tracking for the 1^st balloon use two Byonics Micro-Trak AIO’s, and one Micro-Trak RTG. Both were the “HA” variants.

Spherachutes

http://spherachutes.com

Both balloons used 60” Heavy Duty Spherachutes with Weather Balloon Attachments. Spherachutes allows you to choose your own custom color panels. Great for matching school-colors, or making high-visibility chutes. All ten experiment pods on our two Husker game balloons used Spherachutes’ fantastic Fabric Box Wraps (and 11x9x7.25 coolers from ULINE).

Project Aether

http://www.projectaether.org

Project Aether has an nice assortment of high altitude ballooning equipment and is well worth your consideration. We used the 1200 gram Pawan Rubber Products Meteorological Balloons Project Aether sells for the our Husker-game launch.

Other vital equipment

Besides the aforementioned pieces of equipment, we also used an AvMap Geosat 6 APRS navigator matched with a Kenwood TH-72A in each of our chase vehicles. Each balloon also had a SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger as a back-up for our secondary tracking system (i.e. a back-up for the back-up.) Lastly, we outfitted the balloons with 5 GoPro HD Hero 2 Cameras recording both HD video and taking still images.