Wednesday on Cobar High School’s oval. ▪ Photo contributed
After much anticipation and months of preparation, the Hunter School of Performing Arts’ (HSPA) Space Academy Skybound Project achieved lift off in Cobar last Wednesday.
The school’s Year 10 STEM elective project launched two 3,000g degradable latex balloons from Cobar High School’s oval last week.
HSPA teacher Ben Moore, who’s been supervising the group, reports both flights were a huge success. He said one balloon soared all the way to around 35,000 metres, right to the edge of space, which was the project’s main objective, while the second reached about 26,000 metres.
Mr Moore said the data streamed back well across both flights, exactly as their engineering team had planned.
After riding the winter winds east, both payloads from the balloons came back down to earth, one near Tottenham and the other near Narromine, and, with the help of local landholders, both were retrieved by the school’s Recovery and Field Operations team the following day.
