Students of the Space Mission, an inter-department collaboration, finished up their last calculations before launching a weather balloon with a camera to the sun hoping to capture the total solar eclipse on April 8.

Marceline Thornton, a senior physics major and president of the Society of Physics Students, said Zaz Brown, a senior mathematics major and president of the university’s Math Club, thought of the idea behind the Space Mission.

“I think all the departments being so excited about the eclipse kind of jumped on [Brown’s idea], so [Brown] kind of fueled the fire, carved out the path for us to follow,” she said.

Space Mission consists of 12 team members from different university clubs and departments like HacKSU and the Department of Physics, which provided helium for the balloon, Thornton said.

Since the camera will be launched in the stratosphere, starting approximately 33,000 feet above Earth’s surface, the mission was named the Space Mission because of the heights it will be reaching, Thornton said.

“We’re calling it a Space Mission because we are entering the stratosphere, so technically we are well above the clouds where we can call it space,” she said.

A radiosonde, an instrument carried by a balloon used to track atmospheric parameters and transmit them through radio, will be attached to the GoPro camera to track its location, Thornton said.

“[The radiosonde] has an Automatic Packet Reporting System, so APRS,” she said. “This is what we do to ping a GPS off of it so that it doesn’t end up over in the Appalachian mountains or in the lakes.”

Thornton said a few members of HacKSU were tasked with the APRS, coding and ensuring a back-up battery for the camera will click on at a certain point in the trajectory.

Chase Osborne, a junior physics major, conducted a risk analysis regarding where the camera will land after being launched, Thornton said. 

The risk analysis used the software ASTRA, Atmospheric Science Through Robotic Aircraft, to conduct calculations about the balloon’s trajectory a few days before the eclipse, Thornton said.

“’Cause there are so many factors depending on the trajectory and the location of where [the camera] is going to land,” she said, “we want to make sure we’re super clear of where we want it to lift off and where it’s going to land accurately.”

One of the main concerns taken into consideration was ensuring the weather balloon remained under four pounds, Thornton said.

“We had to essentially get approval from the FAA. Any unmanned balloon is allowed to fly as long as it’s under four pounds,” she said. “So, we’re doing everything we can to reduce that pay load.”

Thornton said she was concerned about keeping the camera warm from the projected weather.

“[The camera and other equipment] has to stay so warm, so we are using hand warmers to pack it and make sure that it stays warm,” she said.

The Space Mission chose to launch the balloon in Mansfield allowing them to capture photos and videos above Kent and for the camera to land nearby, Thornton said.

“We’re offsetting from Kent to make sure [the camera] is capturing the eclipse above [Kent],” she said.

Although the Space Mission became an inter-department collaboration to obtain material, it helped spark interest for collaboration amongst the various student organizations, Thornton said.

“It’s just nice seeing so many people come out of the woodwork and get excited to work together,” she said. “[Undergraduates] especially, when you’re in the STEM fields, you want all that experience working with a team.”

Adriana Gasiewski is a beat reporter. Contact her at [email protected].