UNIQUE TRAVEL
Students launch package into space.
“We have it!”
That was the voice of Abigail Bonnington as a group of Annapolis Royal students walked through a back yard and into the woods to retrieve a ‘package’ that had just travelled through the edge of space, across the province, and fell to within a few hundred metres of the Atlantic.
You still had to look up to see the square Styrofoam box that had parachuted from almost 32 kilometres above the Earth’s surface in its 181-minute trip June 27. It landed in the branches of a birch tree about four metres from the ground.
Teacher Derek Smith climbed up and brought it down – to the waiting arms of Griffin Batt who had launched it from his school’s soccer field on the edge of the Annapolis Basin and just a few kilometres from the Bay of Fundy.
“Chick 3 was a success!!! The team has retrieved both the package and footage from the backyard of some very hospitable Lahavians about 300m from the water,” ARSA members said on Facebook moments after retrieving their box. “It sure was dicey for a moment or two - Chick 3 kept us all on our toes, but we’re all extremely happy with the result. Photos and videos to follow.”
‘Chick’ stands for Chick Caldwell, a supporter of the space program in its early days. Caldwell died prior to the initial launch in 2016.
Balloon
The Annapolis West Education Centre students had launched a balloon, trailing a box with cameras and a computer to gather information, almost 32 kilometres into the stratosphere. The balloon expanded as it ascended and eventually, at its peak height, exploded and the parachute opened to ease the package back to Earth.
This time they tracked the package by radio signal, and after a zigzag trip across Nova Scotia picked up the box that had dropped back to Earth about 300 metres from the Atlantic Ocean.
They used GPS to pinpoint it in a residential area just south of the ferry terminal at the end of the Lahave River. By about 6:40 p.m. they had the box in their possession and were checking camera footage.
ARSA’S Bonnington was happy. It was the third launch for her and her teammates over several years and the first time they were able to retrieve the package the same day as the launch.
Asked how she felt, moments after they found the Styrofoam box, she said she was ecstatic.
“It was very dicey for a while,” she said by Facebook Messenger in reference to the proximity of the
ocean.
Bonnington, who had graduated from AWEC moments before the launch in the field behind the school, had been waiting a while to do what the agency achieved June 27 – launch and retrieve the same day.
Previous Flights
The agency’s last attempt, in 2017, saw the box land in rough waters in the Atlantic not far from the June 27 touchdown site. The box was eventually retrieved but gear was missing and there was water damage.
The year before that their flight went fine but the signal from the locator inside the box went to sleep and didn’t wake up for several weeks. They did find that box too – at the edge of a winery north of New Germany.
After that first launch they used some old-fashioned analogue radio tracking technology with help from Al Penney of the Annapolis Valley Amateur Radio Club.
Penney, Bonnington, Batt, Smith, and student Finn Hafting chased the balloon across the province, while anyone with the right website information could follow the chase from their smartphones or computers.
Not only did the box contain a Gopro that took photos, there was a 360-degree camera recording the entire trip. A computer board, programmed by the students, recorded things like altitude and temperature.
In the half hour leading up to the launch, Bonnington held a clipboard with a checklist while Finn Hafting, and Griffin Batt placed instruments inside and outside of the box and sealed it up. Helping was parent Jeff Hafting. The junior members of the space agency were also on hand wearing latex gloves to hold the balloon as it was being inflated with helium.
The Details
Space agency members debriefed in a nearby restaurant after the retrieval, but by the next day had summarized their exploits in a Facebook post.
“Perfect flight and retrieval yesterday! We missed the Atlantic by about 300m and landed in a tree in the backyard of a very accommodating family in Lahave,” the post read. “We hit 31,567m (103,566ft), flew for 181 minutes and hit a top horizontal speed of 156 km/h during our brief time in the jet stream. We ascended a little slower than predicted at 4.5 m/s (16.2 km/hr) and this is probably the reason why we almost landed in the ocean again.”
Members said their descent was the most interesting aspect of the voyage because it showed the effect of atmospheric drag.
“When the balloon burst we fell at 47.5 m/s (171 km/hr) but by the time we were near the ground we had slowed to 3.0 m/s (10 km/hr) just before we hit the tree,” the post said. “This is due to the fact that we were above most of the atmosphere at our peak elevation and there was no air to slow the parachute down.”
Other Exploits
Finn Hafting, Griffin Batt, and Abigail Bonnington also made up the Annapolis Royal Royal Robots senior team that this year was world champions after competing in Detroit this spring.