EOSS-199 was flown Saturday September 27th from Eaton. Because of concerns about shock to the fiber optic cable during launch, we used a hand-over-hand launch technique, which is not something we normally do at EOSS. It did result in a very smooth launch. Unfortunately, while lowering the fiber there was a failure of some sort that caused the fiber to fracture. The "fin" was recoverd from a back yard in Eaton with ~30 feet of fiber still attached.
The EOSS Fun Flight was a success for our three STEM payloads and one club member payload, and a trying day for our beacon builders. Work continues on getting the new beacons into flight-ready conditions.
EOSS204 was the second EOSS flight for the NOAA/LASP Tropopause Temperature Profiler which is designed to use an optical fiber to make in-situ measurements of temperature near the tropopause. The idea is to lower a length of optical fiber from the balloon payload and interrogate it by sending laser pulses down the fiber and determine temperature from the Raman scattering within the fiber. The first time this was tried on EOSS199, the fiber broke after about 50 meters of fiber were reeled out. The fiber that time was 200 microns in diameter with no protective coating. This time the glass
Submitted by Tom Londrigan (... on Mon, 01/12/2015 - 17:02
EOSS-203 resulted in the successful flight and recovery of 9 payloads from COSGC community colleges, after reaching an altitude of over 103,000 ft. The payloads were recovered approximately 7 miles north of Fort Morgan, Colorado at 40º 21.68' N, 103º 47.25' W (based on last received packet of KC0UUO-11). http://spacegrant.colorado.edu/community-colleges/141-transfer/619-community-college-4
