ASCEND!
2012-2013 Important Dates
- November 16, 2012: Workshop/Launch activities at the Clarion Hotel in Phoenix.
- November 17, 2012: ASCEND Launch Day.
- March 22, 2013: Workshop/Launch activities at the Clarion Hotel in Phoenix.
- March 23, 2013: ASCEND Launch Day.
November 17, 2012 Launch Information
Arizona Near Space Research (ANSR) is pleased to announce the flight of ANSR-71/ASCEND!-14. This high altitude balloon flight will take place on Saturday, November 17, 2012 at 9:00 A.M. The baseline launch site will be the University of Arizona Maricopa Agricultural Center, near Maricopa, AZ (33 deg 04.42 min, 111 deg 58.97 min). The final launch site choice will depend on the predicted winds aloft. Watch for additional announcements prior to launch day.
The balloon will be a 3000-gram weather balloon, filled with hydrogen. The expected burst altitude will be 90,000 feet or more. The flight is anticipated to last about 2.5 hours from launch to touchdown.
This flight will be the 14th in a series of ASCEND! flights sponsored by the AZ/NASA Space Grant Consortium. The payloads will contain a variety of scientific apparatus designed and constructed by students from six Arizona Colleges and Universities. Participating schools include the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Pima Community College, South Mountain Community College and Glendale Community College.
APRS Beacons will transmit position information as follows:
KA7NSR-11 and KA7NSR-12 both on 445.925 MHz, KA7NSR-13 on 144.34 MHZ
The ANSR Cross-Band Repeater will operate with an input frequency of 145.56 MHz with a 162.2 Hz tone, and an output of 445.525 MHz. While contacts (especially DX) are welcome, please give priority to chase team members.
Any station capable of putting the cross-band repeater on an Echolink node would be welcome. Please advise us as to the node number.
Our mobile cross band Digipeater will repeat locally the beacons' APRS data to the 144.390 MHz standard APRS frequency and subsequently will be I-GATED to the Internet for out-of-area trackers. You can track the flight using the following links:
http://map.aprsworld.net/
http://aprs.fi/?call=ka7nsr-11 or ka7nsr-12,-13
http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/
Be sure to check http://groups.yahoo.com/group/
Background
"ASCEND!", (Aerospace STEM Challenges to Educate New Discoverers), is an Arizona Space Grant Consortium statewide Workforce Development program, designed to involve undergraduate students from across Arizona in the full "design-build-fly-operate-analyze" cycle of a space mission. Across our state, student teams (from UA, ASU, NAU, ERAU, SMCC, PCC NW--and in FY2011 Glendale Community College (GCC) and Dine College teams will join the group) will 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:
Building a light-weight mechanically and thermally stable container for the experiments.
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.
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. Each semester, teams will congregate in central Arizona for Friday evening pre-launch training workshops, followed by Saturday launch and chase-down activities. The teams will have opportunities meet with representatives from our ANSR launch providers and teams from other participating universities, once or twice a semester. During these meetings--generally held as telecons--participants may ask questions, share experiences and present their ideas for peer response. In April, at the end of each program year, team members will present the results of their year's ASCEND! research and development projects at the statewide Arizona/NASA Undergraduate Research Internship Program Symposium in a topical session devoted to high altitude balloon science.
Flight Data
|
ASCEND! FLT# |
ANSR Flt# |
Launch site |
Altitude |
Notes |
|
|
11/19/2005 |
1 |
27 |
Maricopa |
105,761 |
|
|
1/27/2007 |
2 |
34 |
Maricopa |
98,856 |
delayed from 11/6/2006 (Weather) |
|
4/14/2007 |
3 |
37 |
Freeman Exit I-8 |
92,834 |
|
|
11/17/2007 |
4 |
41 |
Maricopa |
99,229 |
|
|
4/5/2008 |
5 |
43 |
Gila Bend |
92,209 |
|
|
11/22/2008 |
6 |
47 |
Goldwater Rng |
95,867 |
|
|
4/4/2009 |
7 |
48 |
Gila Bend |
89,676 |
|
|
11/21/2009 |
8 |
52 |
Gila Bend |
93,538 |
|
|
3/27/2010 |
9 |
54 |
Gila Bend |
86,450 |
|
|
11/20/2010 |
10 |
59 |
Quartzsite |
96,214 |
|
|
3/26/2011 |
11 |
60 |
Gila Bend |
85,978 |
|
|
11/19/2011 |
12 |
65 |
Quartzsite |
89,977 |
|
|
3/31/2012 |
13 |
67 |
Maricopa |
97,940 |
|
|
11/17/2012 |
14 |
71 |
Maricopa |
97,940 |
|
|
3/23/2013 |
15 |
|
|
|
ASCEND! Program Websites
