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Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project

Students from Casa Grande Union High School (CGUHS) will be working on a multi-institution project involving Arizona State University (ASU), University of Arizona (UArizona), Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), Glendale Community College (GCC), and Phoenix College (PC). The goal of this project is for students to build and launch high altitude balloon payloads to observe and collect data during the upcoming annular and total solar eclipses. The Arizona schools joined together to apply for participation in this project, managed nationwide by Montana State University. The Arizona research group will collaborate on this nationwide NASA funded project. CGUHS will be working with ASU and UArizona on the engineering aspects of one of the payloads. The project leader for the CGUHS group is sophomore Elias Razo. Elias will also be co-project lead for the ASU/CGUHS/UArizona group. Progress on this project is proceeding as anticipated, but the bulk of the work will be completed this summer with classes, work sessions, and practice launches around the state. CGUHS is an Associate Member of the Arizona Space Grant Consortium and participates in the ASCEND High Altitude Balloon program, designing, constructing, and launching instrumentation payloads to approximately 100,000 feet. The Cougars are advised by John Morris, CTE Engineering/CTE Software & App Design/Mathematics Teacher. Visit the Near Space Research Team at https://www.cguhsd.org/cgNearSpaceResearchTeam.aspx.