that's the best one at stream that's that's the moneymaker they should for
the members of lenoir-rhyne University's solar eclipse high-altitude balloon team
one year of work has come down to this moment
the great American total solar eclipse as the moon begins its dance to block out the
Sun the rare breaks in the clouds covering the Pisgah astronomical Research Institute
give earthbound observers a reason to cheer but for the students the darkening sky signals launch
time after a final check of instruments the team lets its hopes soar with its balloon and
payloads destination astronomical awesomeness at 90,000 feet lenoir-rhyne is one of more than two
dozen universities working with NASA to capture images of the eclipse with high-altitude balloons
everything went well everybody did their job a lot of nerves a lot of stress but in the end I
mean the result was awesome the helium filled latex balloon climbs quickly about 1,000 feet
per second it carries video and still cameras computers for live-streaming a GPS tracking
system and instruments measuring temperature altitude and wind speed students designed
and built all three of the payload packages together those packages couldn't exceed six
powers it went down to close to 64 near Brevard and it turned around went back back past us went
flipped the other way into Wolf Mountain the tracking system indicates strong upper-level
winds the balloon travels far and wide as well as high and all that buffeting takes a toll
servers which lock in the video transmission systems go down yeah and then when it goes
off rotate until it seems like maximise tilt tilt Mac smiles students must manually follow
the balloon to receive images from the cameras do one accidents disease or independent axes
do one at a time this works for a lot of a line the long as you've got independent
act sees this is what you do max one max the other man or was it launched from right there
so it's okay it's kind of going east all right okay and there's the picture oh my gosh you're
above the clouds wow the balloon reached more than 90,000 feet higher than any test balloon
had flown and it reached that point just as the shadow of totality covered the ground station
clouds blocked any view of the Eclipse from the ground but an eerie darkness fell over everything
daytime in the distance nighttime at base camp the birds started singing as the Sun reappeared
and as the data stream showed the balloon popped in the vacuum of space and was heading to earth
the team assessed what it had learned and went well pretty much burst at totality which is I
couldn't time that better that was luck could you see totality or could you see the Eclipse
on them we it was pretty much out of range okay was it got outta range about eighty thousand feet
okay and it was that ninety nine thousand four hundred was our last recorded value
before it burst okay which is amazing and the balloon project captured amazing images
that dark spot is the shadow of the moon on the earth it was one of the primary goals for the team
so successful it's successful very successful could be a proud of proud of the team they
did a great job they worked well together they technically were proficient and fun to be around