2017 Elijah High-Altitude Balloon Launch Team Summer Proceedings Report

ERI Summer 2017 Fellowship Report

Introduction Ocean island basalts (OIB) are thought to sample the Earth’s deep mantle, whereby thermochemical plumes entrain lower mantle material and bring it to the surface where it erupts. By measuring the isotopic compositions of global OIB—which record the isotopic compositions of OIB mantle sources—geochemists can “map” the isotopic heterogeneity of the Earth’s deep mantle (e.g., Gast et ...

High Altitude Launch for a Practical SSTO

Existing engineering materials allow the constuction of towers to heights of many kilometers. Orbital launch from a high altitude has significant advantages over sea-level launch due to the reduced atmospheric pressure, resulting in lower atmospheric drag on the vehicle and allowing higher rocket engine performance. High-altitude launch sites are particularly advantageous for single-stage to or...

Defined Radio for the Wright State University High Altitude Balloon Team

Problem Our team chose to design a software defined radio to include on the WSU high altitude balloon. Currently, the balloon is using a hardware-based amateur radio communication system which is not configurable to multiple communication protocols. Any significant modifications to the current system require major hardware upgrades which are costly and time consuming. A software defined radio i...

Orbital evolution of high-altitude balloon satellites

We investigate the motion of artificial satellites with large area-to-mass ratios in high-altitude low inclined orbits, perturbed simultaneously by solar radiation pressure andEarth’s oblateness. Our study is based on recent theoretical advances in circumplanetary dust dynamics (Hamilton & Krivov 1996). Applying these methods to the motion of balloon satellites, we write down and analyze the or...

DHS Summer Team Program Research Report