UPDATE: We plan to launch Tuesday, June 16th, about 8:30am.  When we launch you can follow the flight path LIVE: Here’s how. Participate in a STEM project that travels to “Near Space” from your home!! Send us your “High Hopes” and we will release them from a high altitude balloon, perform some cool experiments and take incredible photos and video we will share with you.             Follow this link to submit your “High Hopes” for your learning, your community and the…

Today was the day! We launched the first High Hopes Project balloon today at Cottonwood School in Fernley, Nevada. Today’s launch was planned as a way to test the designs for the science and engineering payloads elementary, middle school and high school students have completed. University of Nevada, Reno, mechanical engineering students were on hand to launch the balloon, so it was a real K-18 collaborative event (some of the UNR students are grad students). Here’s a link to a Flickr set of photos. Unfortunately,…

We claim The High Hopes Project in a model global STEM project. Just to highlight one aspect of this project as a collaborative model (and there are many) we are sharing this: In order to fly the “High Hopes” of the world to 30,500 meters (100,000 feet) where they will be released, we challenged Sparks High School Students to design the payload, it includes a mount for a camera to catch the action when it opens to release the “High Hopes” (submit yours here so…

Below: Solar panel and Arduino  Note the solar panel and Arduino that will be launched on a “High Hopes” high altitude weather balloon to about 30,500 meters (100,000 feet). The solar panel will be attached to the top of a payload so it is exposed to the sun, much like the payload pictured here.  The Arduino will record how much electricity the solar panel is producing constantly throughout its flight. What will happen to the amount of electricity the solar panel produces as it climbs through…

Note the 4 party balloons that all started out the same size before they were inflated, on their way to 30,500 meters (100,000 feet ) from a balloon flight last year. On our upcoming flight we will inflate 4 of the same size balloons – the first balloon will be inflated to about 1/4 of its capacity (like the yellow balloon in the photo), the second balloon to about 1/2 of its capacity (see the green balloon above), the third to about 3/4 its capacity…