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Stratospheric Eclipse Ballooning in 2023 and 2024: The U of MN – Twin Cities Experience Continues

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Abstract

The stratospheric ballooning team at the U of MN – Twin Cities served as the “Central” Engineering pod-lead team for the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP). Besides helping train other teams in our pad, over several years our team helped work on a variety of projects in support of NEBP, most notably (A) the development of an autonomous vent (ultimately not selected, in favor of Montana’s Iridium-commandable vent), (B) the HERMES GUI for the video-streaming ground station, and (C) the PTERODACTYL flight computer / sensor suite. Eight students and a faculty adviser, plus several former ballooning students, made eclipse trips to New Mexico in October 2023 and to Indiana in April 2024. This article gives an overview of our successes and challenges with NEBP payload (and other payloads) flown during the two eclipses. Video-streaming turned out to be our biggest challenge and ultimately we lost the hardware altogether while driving to the second eclipse (ouch!), so we were unable to even attempt video-streaming on that date. Our PTERODACTYL flight computer also worked well generated valuable data for many NEBP teams, including ours. Venting worked well and allowed us to improve stability for photography on both eclipse dates, though venting failed on some practice flights. We are particularly pleased with the 360 video we collected during both eclipses. This paper will also discuss other payloads that we flew on eclipse missions but still need work, including one designed to actively point cameras at the Sun using a Pixy-camera-pointed pan/tilt mechanism.

Keywords: stratospheric ballooning, eclipse ballooning, NEBP, NEBP pod lead, PTERODACTYL flight computer, autonomous vent, HERMES GUI

How to Cite:

Thompson-Jewell, E., Wallo, S., Glamm, J., Halatsis, A., Cook, J., Mekbeb, Y., Thayer, J., Posey, A., Bazan, N., Sangelaji, E. & Flaten, J., (2024) “Stratospheric Eclipse Ballooning in 2023 and 2024: The U of MN – Twin Cities Experience Continues”, Academic High Altitude Conference 2024(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/ahac.17989