Find out more about this project here. We finally have a decent window of weather to launch tomorrow, June 16th. We’ll try to launch about 8:30am PDT. When we launch, a communications payload keeps us in touch with the balloon’s progress. Besides 2 SPOT Trackers that use satellite technology to pinpoint the balloons location once it lands (2 in case one fails)  a HAM radio transceiver sends out a signal that we (and you) can watch live on a Google map. To do so go to aprs.fi…

View from “near space” – about 30,500 meters (100,000 feet) The “High Hopes Project” is designed to be a model global STEM learning project. But what is it really and how does it work? Who is involved? How can my students and I be involved? Last year we dropped GoPro cameras 45 feet deep in Lake Tahoe and pulled them up to almost 30,500 meters (100,000 feet) attached to a high altitude weather balloon to investigate how that would work. No students were involved in…

Note: If after reading this post you decide to participate submit your “High Hopes” Here.  Doug Taylor and I started the High Hopes Project back in 2010, when we were both teaching 4th grade. Doug had seen this article about MIT students sending a styrofoam cooler attached to a balloon with a camera inside to near space and thought it would be a great way to study the layers of the atmosphere and other topics we were supposed to teach. Besides the science, language arts…

Note: If after reading this post you decide to participate leave your “High Hopes” Here. We are planning our biggest launch yet during the spring of 2015. To kick off this project, which will be explained in more detail in future posts, we are launching 3 high altitude balloons this Friday from the Great Reno Balloon Race while 900 students are there to launch their own tissue paper balloons. The balloons will make it to about 60,000 feet ( 18,000 meters) and will carry the…