KERO 23 ABC

Student Science Project Goes into Space

Rimstar.org has posted an article and new artwork on Airship to Orbit.

Today we’re mounting the tracking systems on the High Racks. The first step though is balancing. All the gear goes on and get shuffled until it’s level and all the cables reach and none of the radios stomp on systems and the data line don’t cross antenna lines and…..

This is from about eight years ago.

The PongSats have started arriving. Just over 400 have made it in so far.

The team put in a long day Saturday on fins and tracking systems.

Sewing Fin Sails                      New Fin Frame Rods

Fins in there folded position.

Anthony working on a telemetry system and Kevin mounting a balloon release system on Away 48.

On April 9th more student experiments than have ever been flown at one time ever are heading to the edge of space.

We are going to use three vehicles to carry them. By spreading them across three vehicles we can both give the PongSats a good high ride (over 100,000 feet) and do it with a fast climb rate. We need to climb fast for spring launches to keep the downrange short. It’s awful muddy out there this time of year.

Introducing Away 47, 48 and 49:

There is now exactly one thousand PongSats signed up for the next mission.

We’re now selling the “Floating to Space” book directly. We’re selling it $2.95 below list and we throw in free shipping!

We’ve also added a PongSat Level Donation option of $500. We’re still working on closing the budget for the upcoming PongSats mission. We could sure use some help.

Check it out:  The JPA Store

This isn’t JPA but it is to great not to post.

There was a crew on board and it flew to 10,000 feet.

We started using honeycomb cardboard as High Rack decks. Today we tried bending and curving the material to see what other uses we can put it to.  We already intend to slightly curve it and use it as upper deck structures in Ascender inner helium cells. Hmmmm…  Art Deco High Racks anyone?

High Rack assembly continued on Saturday. The team mounted the main decks to the carbon frames and assembled sets of the small top decks.  We’re also preparing a rockoon mission. That mission is further along and in the code debugging stage.

Alan Boyle wrote a great article on PongSats at the Cosmic Log:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/03/6182388-more-space-shots-for-shuttle-fans