{"id":23018,"date":"2016-08-20T10:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-08-20T15:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=23018"},"modified":"2016-08-20T03:16:23","modified_gmt":"2016-08-20T08:16:23","slug":"austin-peay-state-university-students-to-launch-high-altitude-balloon-during-2017-eclipse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2016\/08\/20\/austin-peay-state-university-students-to-launch-high-altitude-balloon-during-2017-eclipse\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay State University Students to launch high-altitude balloon during 2017 eclipse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Almost like dominoes toppling over, only in reverse, a line of high-altitude balloons will gradually rise into the late summer sky, from Oregon to South Carolina, on August 21st, 2017.<\/p>\n

That afternoon, the shadow of a total solar eclipse will traverse the entire country, and as it nears Clarksville, a team of Austin Peay State University students will release their own helium-filled inflatable.<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay Physics students Mary Sencabaugh, Jacob Robertson, Megan McCracken and Dominic Critchlow prepare the ground system they built to track the high altitude balloon they will release during the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re one team of about 60 in this national collaboration called the Eclipse Ballooning Project, and the goal is to have institutions along the (eclipse\u2019s) path of totality stream live video and images of the eclipse,\u201d Jacob Robertson, an APSU physics student, said.<\/p>\n

Earlier this summer, Robertson and two other APSU students\u2014Megan McCracken and Mary Sencabaugh\u2014traveled to Montana State University for a conference on the NASA-funded project.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this workshop, we built the payload and ground system that will be used to stream video from 80,000 feet during the 2017 eclipse,\u201d Robertson said. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting because we\u2019re combining meaningful science outreach with legitimate science.\u201d<\/p>\n

On August 21st, 2017, videos from the balloons will be streamed on NASA\u2019s homepage, www.nasa.gov<\/a>. To make sure a video is available when the eclipse\u2019s shadow passes over Austin Peay\u2019s campus, the APSU team will spend the next few months conducting test flights of their high-altitude balloons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re only going to have a two-minute window, and we have to make sure our balloon is up there, above the atmosphere,\u201d Sencabaugh said. \u201cAnd it will go up to about 90,000 feet and then it will pop, but if it pops too soon, we won\u2019t get any footage because it will just start tumbling.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to capturing live video of the eclipse, the team is looking to attach other experiments to the high-altitude balloon project. One idea includes sending tardigrades\u2014eight-legged, microscopic animals\u2014into the stratosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re little microscopic creatures that can survive the vacuum of space,\u201d Sencabaugh said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey should be able to survive and come back alive,\u201d McCracken added. \u201cThat\u2019s our plan\u2014get them back alive and have them here.\u201d<\/p>\n

APSU student Dominic Critchlow, a veteran of high-altitude balloon research, is also joining the project. He plans to attach an array of cameras, powered by a lightweight computer he built, to the balloon. His goal is to get pictures of the sun during the eclipse.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be interesting to see what the sun looks like from that altitude,\u201d he said. \u201cWill it be similar (to other flights), will we even see anything? Are we going to see something really cool that no one has seen before?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the coming months, more APSU physics and astronomy students are expected tojoin the project. If successful, millions of people will be able to view the team\u2019s video of the solar eclipse on nasa.gov.<\/p>\n

Theteam\u2019s balloon launch is only one of several projects taking place at APSU during next year\u2019s historic eclipse.<\/p>\n

For more information on the University\u2019s eclipse projects and events, visit www.apsu.edu\/eclipse<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Almost like dominoes toppling over, only in reverse, a line of high-altitude balloons will gradually rise into the late summer sky, from Oregon to South Carolina, on August 21st, 2017. That afternoon, the shadow of a total solar eclipse will traverse the entire country, and as it nears Clarksville, a team of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,7207,262,825,25641,8154,16297,26678,28943,19616,2406,11328,11478,8447],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-5Zg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23019,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23018\/revisions\/23019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}