We have been doing some updates to the NASA eclipse ballooning equipment and additional testing.

There was a test of the Iridium trackers for all the teams across the country on May 30th, 2017. All of the teams shown on the map plan to travel to the path of the total eclipse in August. Our balloon is just to the right of the word “Nebraska” on the map below.

Two nationwide tests of the equipment for all of the of the ballooning teams were scheduled June 13th and June 19th with a dry run on June 20th. We did not find out about the June 13th one until after we had planned a family vacation to Lake Okoboji in Iowa. So, we took up our equipment with us. Now, that’s dedication!

We set up on the deck beside the lake.

After some back and forth on our conference call with Montana State University, we were able to get the streaming video to connect to the main eclipse streaming live website.

This is a screenshot of the streaming video from the video camera payload on the computer.

This is what the website will look like on the day of the eclipse except, hopefully, we will be able to stream video from the balloon while in the air.