High-Level Project Summary
The objective of this project was to create a Lesson Plan and Bill of Materials for a High Altitude Balloon with a low cost. This was made specifically for students who are interested in taking on this experiment as a challenge and a learning experience in the field of Astrophysics. It gives them more convenience in gathering the materials needed for this experiment, which are significantly more cheaper than preparing or purchasing official High Altitude Balloon Kits while allowing them more flexibility in changing the setting of the experiment and giving more significance in the knowledge and experience that can be gained here.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
The lesson plan shows a detailed step-by-step solution to building a low-cost High Altitude Balloon, launching it into the skies, and recovering it afterwards. The High Altitude Balloon uses a 350g Balloon and a Styrofoam Cooler that can insulate the contents inside to ensure they are still functional while subject to very low temperatures in the stratosphere.
The experiment uses an Arduino Uno board to save the GPS and Information gathered throughout its flight. The information is saved in an SD Card that can be collected and analyzed once the Balloon is recovered.
This low cost project not only helps students build such an experiment with relatively less funds, but also gives them a lot of flexibility in setting their purpose and their goal, be it taking weather recordings or taking pictures of the earth or space from the skies. In the future, it could be revised further to ensure more students get the opportunity to test their skill and knowledge without worrying too much about the finances necessary to achieve it.
Space Agency Data
PowerPoint Presentation (nasa.gov)
The above link gave us an in-depth knowledge on Astrophysics, specifically Balloon flights into space. We made use of the types of Balloons and standards to further our research in this field and provide a more concrete solution to the challenge we have accepted.
Hackathon Journey
As IT students, it is quite rare for us to venture into Astrophysics and try and learn new concepts and ideas whilst adding our learned knowledge about technology into the mix. We took this challenge to come out from our comfort zone and it was exhilarating as well as educational.
We faced many issues due to a lack of knowledge in the field at first, but because of the guidance received from Dominic Benford and Chaneil on the first day of the competition. Only a few texts were needed to give us our breakthrough in our efforts to complete this challenge as best as we could.
References
PowerPoint Presentation (nasa.gov)
High-altitude balloon - Wikipedia. En.wikipedia.org. (2021). Retrieved 2 October 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_balloon.
Civil Aviation Authority - Homepage. (2021). Retrieved 3 October 2021, from https://www.caa.gov.om/
Balloon Performance Calculator – High Altitude Science. Highaltitudescience.com. (2021). Retrieved 2 October 2021, from https://www.highaltitudescience.com/pages/balloon-performance-calculator.
Balloon Performance Calculator (highaltitudescience.com)
Balloon Performance Calculator – High Altitude Science. Highaltitudescience.com. (2021). Retrieved 2 October 2021, from https://www.highaltitudescience.com/pages/balloon-performance-calculator.
Tags
#arduino #balloon #stratosphere #student
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.