The Vandal Atmospheric Science Team has been working on experiments dealing with high altitude science through weather balloons.
Affiliated with the Idaho Space Grant Consortium, which is funded by NASA, the connection allows VAST to be able to work on specific projects and allows members to gain hands on experience.
“The main purpose of VAST is getting experience on the personal level and allowing people to have access to this type of high-altitude research,” Logan Kearney, assistant flight director, said. “To be able to bring their ideas into reality and, at the same time, get to work as a team.”
The weather balloons that VAST uses are the method in which they are able to perform their experiments. Kearney said that the most interesting part about the balloons is that anyone can buy them.
“If you really wanted a really big party balloon, I mean, go ahead and do it,” Kearney said. “Anyone can launch a weather balloon, but the fun part about our club is we’re able to pull all our resources together and achieve big things.”
As an example of the way VAST members are able to work together, Kearney said that the team was able to rebuild a payload that was destroyed in a test flight.
“In about a month, we were able to go from a test flight that hit the ground and destroyed one of our payloads, to a completely rebuilt version two of it,” Kearny said. “Which also hit the ground a little harder than expected and survived. Everything survived. It was incredible.”
The type of experiments that VAST has been running vary depending on the payload they attach to a balloon.
“We also flew a new carbon fiber shell which we were testing, and it survived after a chute deployment failure, but the payload survived,” Kearney said. “We also have a Geiger counter and a whole host of weather and weather temperature humidity sensors.”
Imaging team lead Riley Vogt said that everything on that balloon was an experiment. Vogt worked on documenting VAST’s experiments as well as attaching a 360 camera, which documented the ascent of the balloon.
“When it happened (launching the balloon), it was the biggest thing,” Vogt said. “We were driving back, and everyone was bugging us to get all the footage.”
VAST plans to make an Instagram and YouTube channel to be able to show off the work the group does. Looking ahead, VAST hopes to be able to experiment with more complexities.
“We’re going to be testing the feasibility of some glided descent payloads and high-altitude droning,” Kearney said. “We’re starting to branch out, but ballooning right now for us is very accessible… It allows us to have a lot of flexibility. But yes, we’re always going to be looking into new technologies and trying to adapt as time progresses.”
Daniel V. Ramirez can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @DVR_Tweets