[TriLUG] Space is big - Tonight's Yuri high altitude balloon launch (RTP)

[Rodney Radford]

I sent this out earlier as a BCC to the list, resulting it being held for moderator approval.  Since the announcement is for an event tonight, I am sending again in case anyone wants to attend:



“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.” – Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy


In honor of today’s 50th anniversary of Yuri Gargarin’s first trip into space, the NC NearSpace team will conduct our first night high altitude balloon launch. The launch will occur a little after sunset tonight at 7:45 at Lake Anne in Raleigh, so if you want to watch it, make sure you are there by 7:30 to allow time for parking. I will be at Techshop from 6:30pm – 7:15pm getting everything ready and there will be others there from the team, so you are also welcome to meet us there before 7pm and follow along with us to the launch (possibly carpool as there is limited parking at Lake Anne).

The launch will consist of a 600 gram balloon filled with helium, lifting a parachute and a small capsule containing a camera and SPOT navigator beacon. The camera will be configured to take a photo every30 seconds until the batteries run out or the memory card fills up. The SPOT navigator beacon will send out an update of latitude, longitude and altitude every 10 minutes while in flight (with a blackout while above 60,000’) and again once it is back down on the ground. After the launch, we will return back to Techshop (or Roth’s Brewery behind Techshop) and will be able to monitor the progress of the flight from there. 

Since that will be so late tonight, our current plan is to rely a bit on hope that it will still be there when we can go this weekend, or that someone will find/retrieve it for us and call us (our name/number is on the capsule). However, I am not ruling out a midnight trip to Centerville for retrieval, depending on where it lands and what we can find out about that location via Google earth.

The current predicted flight path for the balloon which is estimated to take about 2 hours and 45 minutes, reaching an estimated 105,000’, before it lands about 45 miles away near Centerville, NC. By launching soon after sunset, the balloon should be lit by the sun over the horizon as it gets a little higher. In addition, the camera should be taking photos of a ‘reverse sunset’ as it reaches higher elevations. 

Hope to see some of you there!

Our website: http://www.ncnearspace.org/
NSL4 tracking page (will be live tonight): (http://alanporter.com/nsl4/
Spot tracking page (raw data from SPOT beacon): http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0BLfRooLSSqkI00uulFL7vv08K8N9yUKb

Yuri Gagarin’s Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin
Nearspace Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_space