CU Boulder and NASA High Altitude Sensor Package
Arduino based sensor package built, programmed and launched on weather balloon
In 2021 I volunteered for an opportunity with CU Boulder to create a sensor package to be sent to the edge of space. In this project we built a thermally insulated housing, soldered and arranged sensors on an Arduino board, programmed the board, assembled sensors inside and outside of housing, sealed the housing, launched in on a weather balloon, retrieved the package and made sense of the data we received.
Data Recovery
Our Balloon was launched about 20 miles south east of DIA. IT was recovered near the border on Kansas and Colorado. The data package was immediately plugged back into the Arduino IDE to get the logged information. The data shows that my sensor package operated for 4,000,000 milliseconds before losing power. This 4,000 seconds, or 66 minutes, was a little over half of the balloon flight time. Data recovered shows a continuous linear drop in temperature in the outside temp sensor (T2F) until -55F at 2.25*10^6 ms where there is an increase in temperature. This suggests we hit the edge of Troposphere and entered the Stratosphere. The Temp sensor inside the housing (T1F) shows the effects of the insulation and internal heating of the circuitry. The Internal temperature is slower to decrease, and bottoms out at approx. -20F with only a slight rise in temperature upon entering the stratosphere. Temperature readings suggest that my battery died before entering the Mesosphere, where temperatures should drop again. Relative Humidity had general trend downward with some pockets of increased humidity. Pressure versus time shows a beautiful logarithmic decrease. This is contrary to the known linear decrease in pressure thru the Mesosphere, and makes sense only when we account for a steadily increasing Z acceleration during this time.
Data Deep Dive
Test Data
Launch Day Data
Launch Day Data
Test Data the day before launch
Launch Day Data
Launch Day Data
Launch Day Data
Launch day data goes for 4*10^6 ms, or approximately 66 minutes. With a flight time of approximately 2 hours and seeing that the first 16 minutes of data were while on the ground, we got less than half the data wanted.
Outside Temp
Launch Day Data
Outside Temp
Outside Temp spikes on take off, then drops in a linear fashion. It then begins to increase as we cross into the Stratosphere
Inside Temp
Pressure vs Time
Outside Temp
The inside temperature's decrease is muted by the insulation and any heat given off by the circuitry
Pressure vs Time
Pressure vs Time
Pressure vs Time
We get a logarithmic decrease in pressure as we go up, but this is contrary to the known linear decrease in pressure thru the Mesosphere. It does make sense when we account for a steadily increasing Z acceleration during this time. We can't assume time = elevation.
Accel in Z
Pressure vs Time
Pressure vs Time
We accelerate more rapidly the further into the atmosphere we get. This is a logical conclusion with a drop in pressure.
skills and problem solving
What I learned
This was one of my first large group projects and it introduced me to many skills. These include Arduino coding, sensor integration, soldering, and data wrangling.
While the experiment was a success, I would have liked to have had data all the way until the Balloon burst and descended.