- [Frank Graff] The black bear at the entrance to
Lenoir-Rhyne University's campus witnesses a lot of things
from its rocky perch, but what the university's mascot
has seen over the past few months is unique.
- This is our ground station.
- So is this not, this has to be 900 megahertz also then?
- See, because you pull this, it doesn't pull there.
- You just watch it.
- [Frank] In a large, open, grassy area,
near the chapel and the science building--
- Yeah, everything's wired up, alright, and then spin--
- This to spin.
- That one again. - That's the one right there.
- [Frank] A group of engineering and computer science
students, along with their professor, are assembling
and launching high-altitude research balloons.
- Yes sir, and it's going to be nerve-wracking.
- [Frank] No, come on.
- It will.
- Why? Once it goes up, it's gone, you're--
- Exactly. - Okay [laughs].
- All right, here we go, we're good?
- [Frank] Their goal: capture images of the
2017 total solar eclipse over North America,
and live-stream the images to the university, the nation,
and the world.
They're hoping for something like this.
- One album this does still images.
It'll take still images at altitude,
80- to 100-thousand feet.
This one will take video, 80- to 100-thousand feet,
transmit them back down through the radios.
And then we will get those still images and videos,
this will get the video, these two are for the still images.
And we'll get those, they'll go into the laptop.
We will then stream those to a NASA website in real time.
- Two, one, go.
That was nice.
- [Frank] The helium-filled balloon
leaves campus quickly.
The climb rate is about 1,000 feet per minute.
- Well, everything is like connected, so like the payload
is connected to the ring, the ring is connected to
the parachute and the parachute's connected to the balloon.
And so we're holding the balloon down
right before we're launching, and so during launch,
we had to go and, we had to keep everything vertical.
Or not, it's like, when the balloon goes up,
and it goes up fast, it pulls on it.
So we have to like run with it so that it goes up straight.
- [Frank] The balloon will soar to roughly
100,000 feet above the ground.
That's the edge of space.
The team hopes to record, as well as transmit,
images like these, were taken by
a NASA high altitude balloon.
So far, the team hasn't been successful.
But they hope along the balloon's journey,
instruments will measure temperature, humidity, altitude,
acceleration, as well as location.
Those sensors, plus the cameras,
can only weigh about six pounds.
They're packed into specially designed payload containers
to help them survive not only the rough ride,
but also the huge temperature range,
from minus-50 degrees to about 20 degrees.
- And so with that much equipment
and with this size of balloon we're using,
the physics of it says it will be 28 to 30 feet across
when it burst, and then it will just shred.
So it will go up to that point, it'll keep going up.
It'll take about an hour and a half to go up
and about 60 minutes to come down.
- [Frank] When the atmosphere gets too thin,
the balloon pops and everything races back to Earth
at a blistering 25 feet per second.
And it's not always straight down.
The air currents from the jet stream,
which whip at about 150 miles per hour,
have carried the team's balloon more than 90 miles away.
- And once these three things are on, read it,
from a website, it locates us where in the United States
it sets, so it gives us a blue line of how it travels
and the altitude and different,
all the data from this balloon.
- [Frank] NASA is backing the balloon eclipse project.
Lenoir-Rhyne is one of 50 colleges and universities
along the path of totality that are involved
in the challenge.
Besides spectacular views and good science,
there's something else.
- If you can do this, they can do jobs,
and they can do things companies will ask for.
STEM, science, technology, engineering, mathematics,
is the big theme for jobs going forward.
If you can do space-related work, which is really,
I would argue, one of the hardest environments
to make things work, they can do many jobs at a company.
A company can hire them to do things
out-of-the-box, literally,
and that they don't mind working on.
They're not scared to do projects that seem
outside their comfort zone.
These guys knew nothing of this when they started.