On a bright and early Saturday morning, a group of Arizona State University students gathered in a remote desert area, just west of Quartzite, Arizona.
Their reason for being there? To launch two large weather balloons that can carry a payload (mechanically and thermally stable containers) near the edge of space so the students can study how high altitudes affect a variety of objects — in this case, lettuce seeds.
The students are part of ASU chapter of ASCEND (Aerospace Scholarships to Challenge and Educate New Discoverers), an Arizona Space Grant program that engages undergraduate students across the state in the full “design-build-fly-operate-analyze” cycle of a space mission.
They were joined by volunteers from Arizona Near Space Research, an affiliate of ASCEND that helps coordinate balloon launches.
The students prepared two different seed packets for the payloads — one on the outside that will be exposed to high-altitude radiation and one on the inside that will just be exposed to the high altitude — to see how both the altitude and radiation exposure affects the seeds.
Aerospace engineering student Quang Huy Dinh (right) and mechanical engineering student Arlene Morales (left) help prep the payload prior to the balloon launch outside Quartzite, Arizona, on April 1.
Exploration systems design student Elizabeth Garayzar holds the weather balloon payload before the launch on April 1.
Professor Tom Sharp, in the School Of Earth and Space Exploration, and computer science undergraduate student Genevieve Cooper prep the payload for the weather balloon launch.
Cooper attaches lettuce seeds on the outside of the payload that will be exposed to radiation during the weather balloon experiment.
ASU students and volunteers from the Arizona Near Space Research group prep the helium weather balloon during the ASCEND launch outside of Quartzsite, Arizona, on April 1.
Students hold up the payload as it launches with the weather balloon on April 1.
Students watch as a payload and weather balloon take off. The balloons traveled upward of 100,000 feet before popping and parachuting back down to Earth in the Harcuvar Mountains Wilderness.
Photos by Deanna Dent/Arizona State University
More Science and technology
Stopping the silent snitches of the smart world
The world is full of small batteryless devices. And they don’t mind their own business.That solar-powered sensor by the window? Great at harvesting light — and maybe leaking your occupancy habits at…
ASU to co-host international summit on genome editing
A baby is cured for the very first time from a rare, life-threatening disease.Adults with painful sickle cell disease are finding new cures.The dire wolf is brought back to life.The world’s deadliest…
Study reveals new details about giant prehistoric otter
In a marshy wetland forest in China 6 million years ago, an otter the size of a wolf appeared to be the top predator. The otter — Siamogale melilutra — weighed nearly 100 pounds, ate mollusks…