NASA selects Â鶹´«Ã½ team for solar eclipse and high-flying balloon research
A Â鶹´«Ã½ student team was selected to participate in NASA’s upcoming Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) and High-Altitude Student Payload (HASP) project.
Through the , Â鶹´«Ã½ students will gain real-world STEM experience and contribute valuable scientific and engineering data by participating in an innovative NASA-mission-like adventure in data acquisition and analysis through scientific ballooning during the annular eclipse on October 14, 2023, and total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Â鶹´«Ã½ students Lovely Ramos, Dustin Leonard, Colin Ott, Cory Pare and Aryan Patel are recipients of scholarships for the NEBP project funded by NASA-NEBP-FSGC (Florida Space Grant Consortium) for two years.
55 teams were selected by NASA for this project and divided into nine pods. Among the teams, Â鶹´«Ã½, University of Central Florida and Florida International University were selected for the engineering track in Florida. Principal investigators and faculty advisors for the Florida teams include Dr. Nirmal Patel, Â鶹´«Ã½ physics faculty, Dr. Jaydeep Mukherjee, director of NASA-FSGC, and Dr. Pradeep Shinde, founder & CEO of Space Loon company.
Â鶹´«Ã½ and UCF teams will fly two high-altitude balloons from San Antonio, TX during the annular solar eclipse, and Little Rock, AR during the total solar eclipse. In addition, Â鶹´«Ã½-UCF teams will also fly a few test balloons from Jacksonville and the Kennedy Space Center. Florida teams will participate in both eclipses, and the resulting data will be analyzed and made publicly available.
The Â鶹´«Ã½ student team is also selected for the NASA- project for NASA’s high-altitude balloon flight, which will launch the Â鶹´«Ã½ ozone sensors payload in the stratosphere from Palestine, Texas, in September 2023. Since 2008, the Â鶹´«Ã½ team has been selected every year for the HASP. In addition to the NEBP team, other Â鶹´«Ã½ students working on the NASA-HASP 2023 project include Haris Smajic, Cathryn Penn, Julian Rowe, Calla Taylor, and Elric Burch.
The Â鶹´«Ã½ student team has already completed the fabrication of a ground station for tracking the balloon, computer-controlled circuit boards, radio communications, designing and fabrication of payload body by 3-D printer and fabrication of nanocrystalline ozone sensors in Dr. Patel’s research lab. During this summer semester, the participating students are registered for a two-credit Direct Independent Study (DIS) course on “Space Research for Engineers”. The team will be attending a workshop at the University of Maryland to receive practical training from NASA experts, Dr. Mary Bowden, Dr. Patel, Dr. Mukherjee, and Dr. Shinde.