High-Level Project Summary
Allotting the ability for students to discover the wonder aerospace holds is pivotal to the engineering field. In light of this, we developed a fun yet economical way for individuals to enamor themselves in aerospace through a high-altitude balloon (HAB) able to reach near space. Our affordable cost and minimal materials list allow future engineers to reliably follow guidelines to build a HAB, gleefully exploring near-space through a camera and flight tracking system. More importantly, this is an opportunity to foster students' passion for engineering, allowing them to coincide and gather knowledge about the engineering process and their role to play in the future engineering world.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Our high altitude balloon uses a myriad of instruments to collect data on the environment surrounding us. We implemented tools into the overall design of the project such as thermometers and cameras to track and understand patterns in the sky and on the ground. Our team is very focused on an environmentally sustainable future so it is evident that our build revolves quite strictly around this principle. We hope that balloons like this can be used in modern day society, as well as more advanced ones in the future to help understand and reverse the effects of climate change by measuring and keeping track of regional temperatures, while also filming long term physical changes to the surface of our planet due to the pullulation of the human population. Although our project did not require any coding languages, we did jump on the opportunity to make use of smaller hardware and software devices as mentioned above.
Space Agency Data
We used information from the NASA High Altitude Student Platform and CSBF website as inspiration for the design of our high altitude balloon. Although the materials and overall development of the HASP balloon is more advanced and costly, we were able to take the basic design of the gondola and payload compartment and scale it down to the insulated styro-foam box. This along with the biodegradable parachute and weather balloon essentially mirrored the HASP balloon. We also used the temperature data from the CSBF website since the HASP balloon flew to a similar altitude of 30 km. Understanding the effects of extreme temperature on the payload and balloon helped us in the design of our project so that it performs properly and remains intact.
Hackathon Journey
We felt elated to be a part of the program; however, we did not expect to gain aptitude in so many areas of Aerospace. This project was chosen since we had prior knowledge of weather balloons through NASA’s High Altitude Student Platform (HASP). Our team approached this project as if we understood the development of the balloon entirely. This challenge proved to be more of a delve into the mechanical components of high altitude balloons and the technical know-how to make such a complex mechanism accessible than we anticipated, our approach adapted to be more critical of our prior understandings. During our experience with NASA, money was a nonissue, we had major setbacks conjoining the correct materials in an economical way to reach near space. To ameliorate the challenges our team faced, we had to gain a new perspective of aerospace engineering where a materials budget was considered. We learned that constructing economically accessible projects for future engineers is incredibly important to garner attention for the field as well as for engineering writ large. Most Aerospace companies aren't exorbitantly funded so finding a balance between an advanced system and an economic one was an important lesson for us. We would like to thank the people at NASA for the opportunity as well as the “West Ranch Aerospace Club” at our school for cheering us on.
References
Tags
#HASP #balloon #hardware #NASA #spacenearyou #awesome
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.