Touching Space using Weather Balloons
Weather Balloon - NASA image
Their story has been picked up by many major news networks and broadcasts around the world. It is a continuation of the weather balloon flights into near space by small private teams that have been occurring lately.
What are Weather Balloons?
Also known by the name “sounding balloon”, weather balloons are unmanned high altitude balloons filled with helium or hydrogen that float up into the stratosphere (18 to 37 km above Earth) in order to measure atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed.
Devices such as a radiosonde often accompany the balloon on its flight to record atmospheric parameters, radar and GPS may be used on the balloon as well to measure things like wind speed.
Weather balloons have been in use since 1896 when French meteorologist Léon Teisserenc de Bort started launching them from his observatory in France. His experiments would lead to the discovery of the stratosphere, the second major layer of Earth’s atmosphere.
The $150 Space Flight
More and more teams from all around the world are using weather balloons to float payloads into near space. As digital photographic and GPS technologies continue to improve and become less expensive, constructing a payload to send aloft in a balloon has become a reality for many.
A team of MIT students have set up a website outlining the steps to make a $150 flight into the stratosphere or near space. The link for this flight may be found here: http://space.1337arts.com/.
According to their website, 1337arts.com, the group is “dedicated to celebrating the marriage of art and science and promoting the beauty of scientific art”.
Embedded Video
Released only 2 days ago the video on the Lego Man’s rise into space already has over 630,000 views on YouTube as of the writing of this article.
On behalf of Sigma Rockets I would like to congratulate Mathew and Asad on their picture perfect flight and their place in the history books of aerospace exploration.
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