‘Up, up and away:’ St. John students launch weather balloon into stratosphere
St. John the Evangelist Regional Catholic School students launched a weather balloon Friday morning that made a journey of about 100 miles at altitudes reaching 108,000 feet.
“Science is endless,” said Renee Petrovich, science and math teacher at St. John. “You get the kids excited, and that’s what’s really exciting about it.”
The school teamed up with Mike Aesoph of Uniontown, a veteran of high-altitude ballooning, who works with area Boy Scout troops and launches balloons in STEM programs.
A small group of students held the balloon steady Friday as it filled with helium and their peers looked on from the parking lot. The students’ work began last year, when the class assembled the balloon and parachute and calculated payloads to establish a trajectory. Two students, Dante Nutt and Ayden Kiefer, worked with Aesoph to design the payload box using 3-D CAD, or computer-aided design, software.
Aesoph released the balloon from a Uniontown City Fire Department ladder truck as the students cheered and strained to track it before it disappeared into the overcast sky. The students used GPS to track the balloon, calculate its route, gather data, observe atmospheric conditions and collect video images. Aesoph used the GPS to chase the balloon and collect the equipment after it popped.
Petrovich said the cameras successfully captured the entire flight, and she and students were excited to watch the footage.
The balloon nearly made it to its target of Waterfall, about 24 miles east of the area it landed.
The project began when Aesoph and Petrovich teamed up to wrote a grant proposal for the project, called “Up, Up and Away,” which includes four balloon launches. The Innovation Grant of nearly $4,000 from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Greensburg funded the project to provide STEM education opportunities to students.
The launch was originally scheduled for May 8, but was postponed due to COVID-19. Petrovich said the students were disappointed the launch was postponed, but that it gave them something to look forward to.
A “pico” balloon that was launched July 29 as another part of the grant project is on its fourth trip around the world. Students are tracking its progress.
“It’s south of France. It’s in the Mediterranean right now,” Aesoph said.
Petrovich said only 100 balloons of that type have successfully launched.
“It’s amazing. It’s amazing that it’s still going,” she said. “It survived a hurricane.”
The school plans to launch two more balloons as a part of the grant project.