LaunchOregon provides a cost-effective way to expose students of all ages to hands-on science, engineering, and math activities in a near-space environment. Practical team-building skills are developed as students prepare for the next generation workforce in aerospace, science, engineering, and technology.
Program Goals
- Expose students to the design of space hardware
- Provide a platform for students to fly their designs in engineering and science
- Develop teambuilding skills
- An inexpensive way to get students involved with and excited about NASA
Program Outline
- Students design and create payloads that carry experiments and data collection tools.
- Participating universities provide a launch platform to successfully launch the payloads.
- "Chase teams" follow the path of the balloon, tracked by Global Positioning System (GPS) to recover payloads
- Students analyze the recovered data.
Why a Balloon?
- Weather balloons provide an inexpensive method of transportation, carrying payloads to high-altitudes (50~100,000 ft) to provide an experience with a near-space environment
- Designing and implementing a balloon payload in a team environment can offer a unique educational experience. It is one of the few opportunities where students can become involved in all aspects of a scientific experiment.
- Relatively short development time allows students to have hands-on experience building the payload, flying it, and analyzing the data that is gathered, while developing team-building skills.
- Instruments such as GPS and cameras placed on balloons are recovered approximately 90% of the time after the completion of the flight. This means that the same instrument can be used multiple times, lending itself to a cost-effective program.
Independant balloon satellite programs exist at several Oregon institutions including:
Portland State University: LaunchPSU, contact Dr. Mark Weislogel - http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~lpsu/
George Fox University: program in development, contact Dr. Robert Melendy - http://www.georgefox.edu/academics/undergrad/departments/engr/faculty/index.html
Southern Oregon University: program in development, contact Dr. Peter Wu - http://www.sou.edu/physics/faculty-wu.html
Oregon State University: OSU PicoSatellite Project, contact Dr. William Hetherington - http://www.physics.oregonstate.edu/~hetheriw/whiki/psp/sys/5.php
Pacific University: program in development, contact Dr. Kevin Carr - http://www.pacificu.edu/about-us/faculty/kevin-carr-phd
Western Oregon University: program in development, contact Dr. Bill Schoenfeld - http://www.wou.edu/las/physci/physci.html