In November 22, 2020, we, at StartEvo Association (my parents, my friends, aprox 50 people) organized a weather balloon launch.
We launch it near Buzau, it reached 30+ km altitude, and decended several hundreds km away, near Danube
In the payload we posted a Arduino setup with sensors…
Here was the launching site, in a field, at a negative temperature.
This is how the payload looked like
Here we inflated the weather balloon with high purity helium.
3, 2, 1….
We started to chase the balloon across Romania. Here I am at a A1 highway refuge, to track it using radio waves. Altitude, vertical speed, horizontal speed, GPS position, temperature.
What we saw on the tracking software
After a lot of work, we finally found it. At decent, we received GPS location at every 30 seconds, that means hundreds of meters altitude difference.
Checking to see if the cricket survived. Unfortunately, at -70 degrees Celsius, its head felt off. So, it was a sad moment.
More details in Romanian here: https://www.kidibot.ro/blog/cum-am-trimis-greierul-orbitic-in-stratosfera-kidibot-stratospheric-launch/
– Student at 11th grade, at Colegiul National de Informatica Tudor Vianu
– President of Vianu Cybersecurity Club
– Trainer at Atlantykron
– Volunteer at Astrofest, Hallo Fest, Sci-Fi Fest, Poli Fest
– Pseudo-Owner of Bacon, my cat.
More about me here.