BioLaunch B07C
Today I assisted with tracking and recovery of a balloon launched by the BioLaunch program run by the Space Systems Developlment Laboratory (SSDL) at Stanford. I will sum it up in 1 word. FUN! The balloon had a pair of APRS beacons, and we had a receiver in the plane, as well as several of them on the ground.
We attempted to intercept the balloon on liftoff from a field in Galt, CA, but do to a communications problem, the balloon lifted off a few minutes before we got there, and was at 6000ft (we were at 4000ft). I was pretty confident in my ability to climb with the balloon for a short period of time, but there was just no way I was able to catch up with it. I did see the balloon for a short period of time, but Cylinder #5 was getting too hot while I was trying to climb at 80 kts. I did however get 1700fpm for a while, that was pretty neat. We returned to TCY in defeat, and waited for the package to start on its way down. The Stanford students were able to get a visual on the balloon using a telescope, so we watched it climb, while receiving the occasional APRS packet. The last packet received put the balloon at 68442 ft, and a few minutes later we saw the balloon pop on the telescope, and within minutes it was down to 42822 ft.
We launched and headed immediately for the predicted touch down spot, which was about 10 miles east of Byron. At one point we received a APRS packet that put the balloon 2000ft directly on top of us, but we did not have a visual on it (it had a bright orange and green 6ft parachute, but no luck). We started a search of the fields in the area south of the last received APRS packet at 2736ft, checking each field and flying in a circular pattern around them. About 30-40 minutes into the search, we spotted the parachute on the ground in a field and started guiding the ground vehicles to the field.
Mission Accomplished, I can’t wait for B07D.
PIC: 2.0