JP Aerospace Blog

Bell’s got a new paint job and we put in place the high pressure tanks for the ballast system. She look’in like she want to hit the water!

On May 10th PongSats and ATO engine experiments will be flown to 100,000 on two balloon vehicles.

This will be Away 102 and Away 116.  Away 116 will be our 178th flight.

Last night we achieved our highest voltage yet from our MHD generator. This test used a larger motor and incorporated what we learned for magnetic focusing experiments we’ve been conducting. Our previous peak was 6.11 volts. This one ran at 8.94 volts. It sure beats the 0.2 volts we got when we started this research five years ago.

Half Tesla! This is our generation eight electromagnet. We just achieved 0.511 Tesla field strength with it. This lets us move on to the building the full Tesla magnet. The new magnet will be at the core of a large scale magnetohydrodynamic (MHD)test this summer in the desert.  MHD is key process of our hybrid chemical/electric rocket engine for the Ascender airship.

It’s a little bit of everything today. We have magnet upgrades for the magnetohydrodynamics system, telemetry install on the high racks for the upcoming mission, Ascender 26 envelope modifications, battery mounts for the submarine and truss construction for the new Tandem airship.