ASCEND!
Important Dates
- April 4, 2008: Workshop/Launch activities at the Clarion Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.
- April 5, 2008: ACEND Launch Day.
Background
ASCEND!, a statewide Arizona Space Grant Consortium Workforce Development program, is uniquely designed to involve undergraduate students from across Arizona in the full “design-build-fly-operate-analyze” cycle of a space mission. Specifically the program goal is for UA, ASU, NAU and ERAU student teams to successfully design and build small payloads for launch from high altitude weather balloons to measure various atmospheric parameters as a function of altitude up to about 100,000 feet and to obtain a series of timed images of the Earth throughout the balloon ascent to characterize surface features, cloud structure and the Earth's curvature. Participation in this program is geared to complement regular classroom learning by offering direct hands-on immersion with the full mission cycle. Few NASA or aerospace industry scientists and engineers ever take a project through the full mission cycle.
ASCEND! payload requirements
Each payload must contain an imaging component interfaced with a tracking device (altitude, latitude/longitude). In addition, atmospheric experiments may be determined by each university design team, depending upon its own goals determined in consultation with program consultants and mentors. Additional and/or alternative innovative engineering or science projects which are not related to an atmospheric study but which could benefit from the high altitude/low temperature environment (for example, testing the reliability of power cells under low temperature and low pressure conditions) are encouraged, subject to weight, size and cost restrictions determined for the project and the viability of the experiments in the extremes of the upper atmospheres where temperatures drop to -60 or -70 C, and atmospheric pressures are nearly negligible.
Design tasks include:
1. Building a light-weight mechanically and thermally stable container for the experiments.
2. Correlating the data from your design package with the standard ANSR launch package (ie., at a minimum your data/experiment must have a clock/timestamp that is synchronized with the ANSR clock) to allow correlation of the images and any atmospheric data with altitude and geographic location with appropriate timing circuits and self-contained power supplies to drive all components of the package.
3. It is also desirable for your team to monitor and record telemetry for the balloon payload.
Operations
All costs (within a specified budget) will be provided for the project, including funds to support a training field trip to central Arizona where the teams will have hands-on experience with an actual balloon launch and simple payload objective, sometime in the middle of the current fall semester, and funds to support field trip to central Arizona to launch their project-designed payload at the end of the spring semester.The teams will have opportunities meet with similar design teams from other participating universities (UA, ASU, NAU and ERAU) once or twice a semester to share experience and present their ideas for peer response. Industry partners such as PM&AM Research (a DoD contractor), the Arizona Near Space Research (a non-profit organization which carries the actual launch details), and the Phoenix Mars lander Mission at the University of Arizona will also be available to provide technical and logistical support. One or more arts media students may be asked to produce a video document the project.
