GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - A local team of students designed and launched a balloon into the atmosphere, capturing breathtaking images of West Michigan.
After about three weeks of planning, the balloon flew high in the sky yesterday for a total of around two hours, going about 85,000 feet into the stratosphere.
“The payload is basically a box that will be put in the atmosphere,” said team member Max Kline.
The box was made out of styrofoam and attached to a balloon. The team also had to crunch lots of calculations.
“Figuring out velocity and the assent rate and decent rate,” said team member Hannah Newcomb.
Normally images like the ones they captured come from space missions.
But the masterminds behind this project are a group of freshman and sophomores from Kenowa Hills High School.
“We launched it in a field far away from an airport so airplanes wouldn't interfere it,” Kline said.
Their STEM class was split into 9 teams.
"We had a GoPro facing th bottom, we had a Canon camera facing the side so we could get the earth and we also had a GPS so we could track it," said 10th grader Brendan Ashton.
They sent the best design up.
“I think it was how small it is and how light it would be to take it up in the atmosphere,” Tyler Cimock said.
The project the school has never done before is taking students to new heights.
“Our two main goals were to successfully launch and retrieve our payload and then the second goal was to get some neat footage," said Lance Jones, the STEM math teacher. "I think in future years we'd like to run some experiments while it's up there."
The balloon traveled nearly 100 miles all the way from Coopersville to Eaton Rapids.
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