What’s more fun than inflating an 8 foot wide balloon?
Launching one up to near-space during a solar eclipse (link)
It was awesome being part of the Artemis 1 high altitude balloon design and launch team during the course of this project.
“A group of Chicago-based citizen scientists launched an enormous balloon into the Southern Illinois sky last week, capturing high-definition images from 90,000 feet in the air during the historic solar eclipse.”
“The participation of citizen scientists allows NASA to collect larger amounts of data across the country than they could do alone. It sounds kind of simple when I say it, but it’s the democratization of science: regular people doing something that used to be only the realm of NASA. It’s also lower-cost, which is important when there are so many budget constraints on our national science projects. Citizen science is the future of science, period.”
– (credit: http://www.chicagomag.com)