Published: July 16, 2008 07:20 am      

Space balloon launch a success

For a video of Monday's launch, see link at right

BOWLING GREEN — Watched by a curious crowd, student and faculty space researchers launched a balloon Monday to the edge of space, where it harvested valuable data for future missions, a Morehead State University scientist said.

The balloon soared more than 91,000 feet above the earth, high enough to see the planet’s curvature and the inky blackness of space. Instruments tethered to it recorded and transmitted data to researchers back on the ground.

“The launch was a resounding success,” said MSU space science professor Ben Malphrus, who is director of the university’s Space Science Center. “All the payload experiments worked ... the data looked beautiful.”

The launch was a project of a consortium of Kentucky colleges and universities called Kentucky Space, which has one suborbital rocket mission under its belt and plans to send a satellite into orbit in January.

Morehead State students helped design the payload instruments, which collected data Kentucky Space will use to design further orbital launches.

The payload included high-resolution cameras that recorded stunning images of the earth and the blackness of space.

The launch team spent much of Sunday on a dry run, testing the balloon and its instruments and rehearsing their pre-flight and launch procedures. Then at dawn Monday they took it all to the Bowling Green airport where they inflated the balloon in a hangar and attached a long tether dangling with instruments.

After last-minute tests, crew members tugged the balloon outside and released it to soar into the flawless blue of the Western Kentucky sky.

Scientists had hoped the balloon would make it to 100,000 feet, but anything over 80,000 feet was cause for celebration, Malphrus said.

At 91,277 feet, above 99 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere, the balloon finally burst. A parachute deployed on the way down and a GPS instrument helped researchers recover the payload.

The Morehead students helped design the payload and were primarily responsible for the communications system that beamed data back to earth.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.