RELEASE NO: 98-18

NASA Wallops Flight Facility to Launch Student Balloons

    NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility and college students from Virginia and New Jersey will join forces during the week of Aug. 10 to launch two scientific balloons carrying atmospheric measurement experiments designed and built by the students.

    The payloads are part of the NASA Student Balloon Program which provides students the opportunity to develop balloon launched experiments that will produce valid scientific results. The students are responsible for all technical and managerial aspects of the project.

    Experiments are being conducted by undergraduate and graduate students from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and four of the member institutions of the Virginia Space Grant College Consortium. The Virginia students are from Old Dominion University, the College of William and Mary, Hampton University and Tidewater Community College, all of which are located in Southeastern Virginia. The first of the two scientific balloons and experiments is currently scheduled for launch from the Wallops Flight Facility during the early morning of Aug. 11.

    The flight for the Virginia students will last from three to four hours and reach a maximum height of 90,000 feet (17 miles). An onboard imaging experiment will provide live videos of the flight and high resolution digital photos. These images may be viewed real-time on the Internet at: http://ixeab2.larc.nasa.gov/~killough/vsgc

    The 100-pound payload includes the gondola, which houses the experiments as well as support systems. In addition to the onboard imaging experiment is a high altitude air sampling experiment that will collect eight samples taken from 65,600 feet to 71,350 feet. There also will be two Global Positioning System (GPS) experiments.

    The NJIT payload is a Multi-Altitude Air Collection System (MAACS).   MAACS, a two year project, was designed and constructed by a team of undergraduate students and will take air samples as the balloon rises to an altitude of approximately 90,000 feet.

    Housed within an aluminum gondola, the testing equipment includes sensitive electronic and timing equipment which must withstand a wide range of temperature and air pressure changes. The equipment will rely on a GPS receiver to determine altitude and trigger the opening of a series of collection tubes.

    "We hope to collect air samples to measure concentrations of various pollutants in the air at different altitudes, " said Dr. Bruce Bukiet, associate professor of mathematical sciences at NJIT who is the project principal investigator.

    Once each balloon has reached altitude and completed the desired flight duration, NASA operations personnel will send an electronic signal to the balloon to terminate the flight. A small tear will develop in the balloon material and cause it to fall to the ground. An onboard parachute will deploy allowing the gondola and experiments to descend. The students will then be able to retrieve their experiments and do post-flight evaluations.

    In late August, students from Prairie View (Texas) A&M University, will be participating in the program and will conduct their balloon launch from the National Scientific Balloon Facility, Palestine, Texas.

    The NASA Student Balloon Launch Program is sponsored by the Office of Space Science, the Office of Human Resources and Education and the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

    More information on the NASA Student Launch Program and Scientific Balloon Program may be obtained by visiting the Wallops Flight Facility homepage: http://www.wff.nasa.gov