Aerial experiment lands 10 miles North of Lake Cumberland
Bowling Green Daily News by Robyn Minor - Sunday, November 21, 2010
Western Kentucky University astronomy students hope to have some practical applications for a stratosphere balloon that they launched Saturday.
The stratosphere balloon carried experiments that will record data that could help develop better telescopes.
WKU associate professor Louis-Gregory Strolger hoped the balloon would reach about 130,000 feet (or the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere) before a
parachute took the payload back down. During the process, sensors would be recording data from the various experiments and a camera would be recording
the event.
Based on the jet stream and launch site at Warren Central High School, Strolger expected the balloon would float back to the ground a couple of hours
later just north of Lake Cumberland.
Strolger and 12 students and others loaded the van and followed the balloon on Ky. 1296 while it tracked north a bit before turning east. It landed
about 10 miles north of Lake Cumberland.
“It’s in a tree,” Strolger said. “It’s on a farm and in the only tree on the farm.”
The balloon didn’t quite reach as high as they would have liked - just 93,000 feet before it burst and a parachute floated the experiments and camera
back to the ground.
“The first kids to get to it were really excited,” he said.
Strolger said he learned a lot about what he needs to do better next time.
Getting a new balloon is the least expense in the project. Other things weren’t quite so cheap.
“The effort has been fairly expensive because the location beacons are one of a kind, engineered by Jason (Krueger) and his company, Stratostar,” he
said. “Getting the whole program going was like $15,000. Of course the payloads were just about $5.”
In addition to the sensors, students were encouraged to put other interesting things in the boxes to see how they would perform at high altitudes.
“They chose mostly things that burst,” he said.
On Monday, students will start poring over the data that was recorded during the balloon’s flight.
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