Spring 2006 Semester MAE 493B “Balloon Satellites”
In the “Balloon Satellites” course, students design, build, launch, track, and recover small payloads,
using helium-filled weather balloons to send these payloads well beyond the stratosphere!
Instrumentation packages are designed according to weight and cost constraints set by the instructors.
In the Spring 2006 class, three experiments were successfully flown: a study of the effects of the
high altitude environment on fruit flies and mosses, a flight of a “cut-down” system to allow an
early abort of a future mission, and a mission to measure cosmic radiation versus altitude
using a photomultiplier tube (PMT). Unfortunately, the payload stack landed in phone
wires above an active railroad track, and three of the four payloads were
hit by a passing train before the chase team could recover the experiments.
Eventually, all three of the student payloads were recovered; one was found by
CSX employees about a month after the mission, located about 4 to 5 miles from the landing location.
The course is taught every Spring semester by Drs. Mike Palmer and John Kuhlman, and is open
to any student with at least sophomore standing. Funding for the course has been provided
by the
NASA
For more information, visit the course web site: http://www2.cemr.wvu.edu/~satellite.balloon/.
