New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
‘Definitely not a spy balloon’
Connecticut students launch weather balloon with NASA
Several dozen students accompanied by a small posse of professors gathered at the University of Hartford athletic fields recently for a training exercise in eclipse chasing.
“We really need to get this launch up. We really need to get this balloon up,” a professor said, waving off a TV camera. “So questions later OK?”
The students and professors are part of the National Eclipse Ballooning Project, a NASA-led study examining what happens to the weather during a solar eclipse. Eighty academic institutions have grouped into 55 balloon-launching teams to study the two solar eclipses due to cross North America between now and next April.
At Wednesday’s training session at the West Hartford campus, several students gently cradle a deflated weather balloon in white-gloved hands. Larry Reed, a balloonist, demonstrates how to tie the balloon shut with nylon cord. They fill the balloon with helium until it’s taller than the students and generating enough lift to almost pick up a full milk jug.
“Just steady it,” a professor calls. “You’re not trying to hold it down.”
As they wait for the launch, a pair of F-16s fly overhead. Several students joke that the government is after their balloon. A professor writes “Harmless Weather Instrument” and a phone number on the sensor payload in case it gets lost.
“Yeah, write, ‘Definitely not a spy balloon,’” Reed joked.
University of Bridgeport aerospace engineering professor Jani Pallis, the launch lead, explained that NASA had given every balloon scientist in the country media and outreach training after the Chinese spy balloon incident this past winter. Before the launch, Pallis filed a notice of the air mission with the Federal Aviation Administration with the launch time and the target altitude of the balloon. The balloon also bears a satellite transceiver and a reflective ball to make it pop on radar.
“They had us all go through media training and asked us to call local law enforcement ahead of time,” Pallis said. “So we could inform the community ahead of time.”
Pallis calls out that they don’t have much more time to meet the launch window. The balloon needs to be off the ground by 10:30 a.m.
Seven universities, including the University of Hartford and Tunxis Community College, have sent teams to learn how to launch balloons and retrieve payloads. Some of the students are from as far away as Pennsylvania and Delaware. Most of the students have no experience launching weather balloons. And eclipse balloon science is a rarified field of study.
“It’s such a rare event,” Pallis said, explaining that this rareness is what drew the scientists to this kind of work. But the real thrill for her is what this means for her students. “I love giving students opportunities to do really unique things. The day of the eclipse you can turn your body 360 degrees and there will be a sundown in every direction.”
Pallis is a long-time NASA science collaborator. She led a similar team of student balloon scientists during a total solar eclipse in 2017. Pallis was already leading a balloon science team with students for a local museum.
On Wednesday, the students were launching two
balloons. One will rise to an altitude of 60,000 feet carrying a payload of sensors and radio transponders. At that height, the balloon will burst, releasing the payload on a small parachute.
The other balloon will carry a different sensor suite up 20,000 feet. This balloon will release its payload 23 minutes into the flight. The payload will drift down by parachute. The students will track the radio signal of the payload and attempt to recover it. The payload is fairly expensive and designed to be reusable.
“It has weather sensors, temperature, pressure, humidity, things of that nature,” said Paul Slaboch, engineering professor at the University of Hartford. The big payload has a precise GPS locator and radios as well. “We can track it, and we can go recover it.”
Slaboch explained that if they did their test run at the full experimental altitude, the balloons would travel between 100 and 150 miles. Cutting the payload early means the students actually have a chance of finding the payload on Wednesday.
“We’re sending up a few thousand dollars worth of equipment, so we want to make sure that we do it
right,” said Slaboch.
A train of students picks up the payload and the parachute, which are tied by a long cord to the balloon. Gradually the balloon, and the payload are released. It takes off into the sky, clearing the trees in moments. Someone asks if they’re getting data off the balloon.
A student checks a laptop. The transmitter is working. They’re in business.
The solar eclipse this October will partially obscure the sun in an annular eclipse from the Pacific Northwest through Texas and down into South America. A total solar eclipse will come the following April, blocking out the sun from Texas into the Great Lakes and parts of New England.
The goal is to launch as many weather balloons as possible into the path of the eclipse. Solar eclipses are sudden, miniature nights. They rapidly drop the temperature of the upper atmosphere, but it’s not clear what effect they have on the
weather.
“We’re using it as a test case for understanding the atmosphere better,” said Angela Des Jardens, NASA’s lead scientist on the project. “This kind of really detailed data we’re getting can help us put more detailed data into our climate models and give us a better idea of how well, or not well, our modeling is working.”
Des Jardens explained that the balloons were also looking for gravity waves. In atmospheric science, gravity waves are the places where different layers of air or water interact. Gravity waves can be generated by the change from day to night, the impact of mountains on the sky. You can see atmospheric gravity waves reflected in high-altitude, wavy clouds.
“It’s theorized that the cold, dark shadow of the eclipse would set up these gravity waves,” said Des Jardens. “It’s basically like small, sharp night coming across a region”
Des Jardens said some of the balloons would be equipped with complex payloads that let them release some helium at a specific time to float inside the gravity waves. At that altitude, they’d bob in the gravity waves like buoys in the wake of a ship, collecting data as they float.
Back on the ground, students and professors whip out cellphones and laptops. Several of them converge on the makerspace at the University of Hartford’s engineering school. On the way back, Andrew Krebsbach, a senior engineering student and Drew Lauzier, a sophomore engineering student, from the University of Hartford, explained that the student teams were also learning to assemble the payloads for their own balloons.
“The whole point of this meetup here is for everyone to do everything so that everyone knows how to do every job,” said Krebsbach.
“If something happens, it’s better for everyone to know everything,” Lauzier said.
Between frantic bites of sandwiches, they check the position of the balloon as it flies over the Quiet Corner.
A message goes out over a group text. The line has been cut and the payload is drifting. The teams make their way to waiting cars. The payload is landing somewhere near Coventry. Some professors, looking at a map of the payload’s flight path worry about it dropping in a lake.
The students dart into cars to chase it down.
“We’ll have to make sure it’s not on someone’s property,” said Krebsbach. “We’ll have to ask to go on the property, or if they’ll retrieve it for us-“
“Or it could be 100 feet up a mature tree,” said Lauzier.
Two hours later, the payload was found up a tree in Coventry. The students and their professors were able to retrieve thousands of dollars worth of weather equipment. The dry run was a success.