A high altitude launch of a weather balloon from the field of West Ferris Secondary School went off without a hitch Monday morning.
The balloon was the project of the Grade 11 Physics class under the direction of teacher Kelly Shulman.
Shulman has helped students launch weather balloons in the past and she undertakes the project with them to provide first-hand learning about such things as weather.
Since the first week of school the students have been putting the payload together which contains things like radio trackers, two cameras and a satellite recovery device for when it lands back on terra firma.
Students like Ryan McColeman filled the balloon with gas, then secured the payload to it and Bridget Juselius had the job of releasing it while everyone watched it ascend.
Several students recorded the event on iPads, cellphones and there was also a drone capturing images of the launch.
Shulman has been waiting weeks for a good launch day and although at a first glance releasing a high altitude balloon on a snowy Monday might not seem like a good idea, the instructor says the snow was not a factor in the decision.
What counted was the wind and where it would take the balloon.
“It might be surprising that we picked a snowstorm but that’s Northern Ontario,” Shulman said.
Shulman says it’s where the upper atmosphere, which was clam on launch day, would take the balloon.
The direction was expected to be in the Kiosk area east of North Bay, a change from an earlier expectation when the weather balloon experiment was first announced a few weeks ago and the belief was it would come down somewhere north of Temagami.
Shulman says the balloon was expected to rise about 30 kilometres, which is three times higher than a plane flies, before it pops and starts its descent.
On the way up it would record temperature changes as the altitude increases and other data and Shulman says all this information will be used in the classroom.
The students took all precautions to make sure the payload wouldn’t get damaged when it lands.
For starters the equipment is secured in Styrofoam to make it water proof just in case the parachute it’s attached to drifts into a lake.
The payload also includes an audio beacon the students will use to help take them to the payload once it lands with the help of tracking equipment.
Because the payload could land in a bush area, Shulman says the students will be dressed in bright clothing since hunting season is underway.
Although the launch went off without any issues, Shulman noticed that the payload swayed quite a bit as it rose with the balloon into the morning sky.
She says that’s a concern because if the swaying continued then an onboard camera shooting video might not be useable because the footage will have too much movement.
In addition there’s the chance the swaying could also jostle the electronics inside the payload and that could create problems with the onboard trackers.
However Shulman notes regardless of what happens the Grade 11 class gets to see science in action and the students get to take on engineering challenges to ensure a predictable liftoff.
