Flight #2000-6 "Capstone"
Launch Date: August 3.
August 4, 2000
107,560 feet!!
Wow, we finally did it! The 100K mark has been elusive for our group since
we've started, but yesterday we finally accomplished a long-standing goal:
to loft a payload over 100,000 feet.
This flight was intended as a demonstration for visiting capstone students of
the Space Studies department at UND. To facilitate a 'short' flight, we
used a 3000g latex balloon over-filled with helium (1 1/2 tanks worth).
The gondola was our rebuilt octagonal foam one that landed in Devil's Lake
on its first mission.
This mission, however, kept the box high and dry. Lauch occured from the Olsen
farm near Manville, ND, at 6:15 pm local time. The gondola actually creaked
as it accelerated skyward from all the force the big balloon was putting on it.
We expected the balloon to burst at a lower altitude due to all the gas we put
in it, but the balloon surprised us by rocketing up to the 107K+ mark in 1
hour and 15 minutes. The flight computer then triggered the cut down and the
released balloon burst only seconds later (visually observed by two eagle-eyed
chasers). The payload took about 40 minutes to descend into a bean field south
east of East Grand Forks, and was recovered relatively undamaged (one lost camera
filter, and a battery pack broken loose from its mount).
We hadn't expected to break the 100K mark on this flight, but it seems that
almost everything went right for a change. The only non-functional piece of
gear was our Geiger counter, which, despite herculean efforts by Trish,
refused to respond to computer commands, and was left off the flight at the
last moment. Both cameras, APRS/GPS, 440MHz repeater, and the flight computer
(and cut down) all worked perfectly. The tracking signal was very strong.
Filling the balloon went smoothly, and the clouds plauging us cleared away
10 minutes prior to launch. The wind also died to near nothing for launch,
so the weather Gods were smiling on us. We're very excited to have pulled
this off, and more details will be posted soon.
Return to the UND HABP webpage.