ATVQ Winter 2011 Publication - Space Hardware Club - University ...

Liberty Middle School Balloon
- Bill WB8ELK
Liberty Middle School eighth grade science class students with their high altitude balloon
On April 13th, 2011 members of the UAH Space
Hardware Club launched a balloon carrying eighthgrade
student experiments from Liberty Middle
School in Madison, Alabama to the edge of Space.
The Space Hardware Club (spacehardware.uah.edu) is
funded mostly by Alabama Space Grant and is comprised
of volunteer UAH (University of Alabama in
Huntsville) students who do a variety of BalloonSat
and satellite design projects. They often do outreach
programs with local schools which is a great way to
inspire students to pursue a career in space, science
and technology. This is a low-cost way to allow students
to send their experiments into a space-like environment
and allows them to run their very own space
program right from their school.
This flight flew four student experiments from Ms
Lyons’ eighth-grade science class. They flew a variety
of things to see what happened to them during their
journey into the sub-zero temperatures and near-vacuum
of the stratosphere.
One experiment consisted of markers, pens and even
12 Amateur Television Quarterly Winter 2011