GRAY — A university science group’s experimental balloon that veered off the intended course has finally been located in a tree by a local woman and her children.
RIT SPEX, the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Space Exploration Research Group in Rochester, N.Y., is behind the space engineering experiment.
The group’s news release described the balloon as its “first attempt at space systems engineering and is designed to characterize the upper atmosphere for future high altitude balloon flights using pressure and temperature probes.”
Connected to the balloon was an orange box equipped with hand warmers, seven batteries and a Go-Pro camera, which will hopefully have the results and data the students have been waiting for.
The balloon was launched Oct. 25 and had been missing ever since. Once the balloon reached Maine, transmission was lost. The exact location where it landed could not be determined.
An email from August Allen, flight director of the launch, said “a mother and her kids found it high in a tree in Gray, Maine and have spent the past few days trying to get it down.” She is mailing everything back to RIT with the exception of the actual balloon, “which is apparently still stuck in the tree.”
According to the supervising professor, Dr. Dorin Patru, this was their fourth tree landing. “I’m already thinking of a senior design project to design a tree payload recovery system,” he said.
The students expected the balloon to land in upstate New York, but storm winds brought it 400 miles to Gray.
RIT SPEX intends to use the results from their experiment for a NASA experiment submission.
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