The Casa Grande Union High School (CGUHS) Career & Technical Education (CTE) Engineering/Near Space Research Team took part in a pre-launch briefing and launch of their High-Altitude Balloon Payload during the first weekend of April. The students have spent the past couple of months designing a science experiment and designing, constructing, and testing an instrumentation payload to launch into the atmosphere. This is the second semester that CGUHS, the only high school in Arizona to participate in this project, has launched a payload.
The students sought to create a profile of the ozone layer. To gather data, the students included three ultraviolet light sensors, an O2 sensor, and an O3 sensor. The payload also contained sensors for detecting internal and external temperature, humidity, and pressure. The sensors were controlled by an Arduino Mega controller and powered by a custom-designed and student-built power distribution board. Power was supplied by a 7.2-volt lithium-ion battery pack. In addition to the sensors, the payload was equipped with a digital camera running on a separate power supply and set to take a still photo every 60 seconds for the duration of the flight.
On Friday evening, the CGUHS students, along with teams of students from Arizona State University, The University of Arizona, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Phoenix College, Pima College, Dine College, and Central Arizona College, briefed each other on their payload construction and science mission. Saturday morning, all schools traveled by convoy to the planned launch site at I-8 and Freeman Road. There, the two balloons were inflated and payloads were attached to their designated balloon. CGUHS freshman Aidan Schairer was volunteered to be on the team of three students that inflated the balloon that was to carry our payload aloft, designated the ANSR-137/Ascend-43 balloon flight.
The balloon was released (
click here for the video link) and, after the launch of the ANSR-138/Ascend-44 balloon flight, they proceeded by convoy to the tentative recovery area. Each balloon was equipped with three transponders broadcasting a signal that allowed the balloons to be tracked. Computer models updated us on the current location and predicted destination of the balloons. Contact was maintained between vehicles by HAM radio.
The CGUHS balloon reached an altitude of 88,000 feet before bursting. Their Fall 2021 payload had reached an altitude of 107,000 feet, but high winds higher in the atmosphere dictated that the balloons be inflated to 130% capacity for this launch, causing the balloon to burst earlier, and thus not go as high. The mechanics of this had all been explained to the students prior to launch. They recovered their payloads a few miles south of the casino in Maricopa, in a farmer’s field.
When the CGUHS students opened their payload to remove the microSD cards from the data logger, they discovered that there was no power to any of the devices. Upon reviewing the data, the students found that they had only approximately 30 seconds of data and no photographs. The project then switched from a science experiment to a forensics problem in order to determine the nature of the failure mode(s). The students are now going through a root cause analysis exercise to determine the faults and to put steps in place to avoid the failure mode(s) on future missions.
The students will present their analysis and the results of both the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 flights at the ARIZONA/NASA Statewide Symposium in Tucson later in April. In addition to the colleges and universities that participated in the High-Altitude Balloon payload project, there will be more than 120 undergraduate and graduate students from around the State of Arizona presenting the results of their NASA Space Grant research projects.
The CGUHS Near Space Research Team is Neal Allado, Merick Carlisi, Angel Gonzalez, Sophia Jorda, Jonathan Lawson, Danika Liebhart, Elijah Ramirez, Elias Razo, and Aidan Schairer. The team was chaperoned by Annamae Jorda, CGUHS Science Teacher.
CGUHS is an Affiliate Partner with the Arizona Space Grant Consortium and participates in ASCEND (Aerospace STEM Challenges to Educate New Discoverers) projects managed through The University of Arizona. The CGUHS Engineering team was funded for this project entirely by the National Space Grant Foundation.