Try crossing a science experiment with a Ping-Pong ball. What do you get? What else, but a PongSat!
If weather and technology cooperates, Texas students this weekend will see their research ideas rise to the occasion. Carried by balloon platform, student-devised experiments are to be flown to the edge of space.
The motto "small is beautiful" fits snuggly inside the PongSat way of doing business.
Tiny computers and electronics have already made the climb to near-space. So, too have cancer research and atmospheric sampling investigations. Even flights of mini-marshmallows yield interesting results.
Texas Spaceport
PongSats are an easy and inexpensive way to get students excited about science and engineering, said John Powell, President of JP Aerospace, based in Rancho Cordova, California. The independent firm is dedicated to achieving cheap access to space through low cost, innovative solutions.
JP Aerospace is sponsoring and operating the PongSat flights. To date about 100 PongSats have been sent skyward.
This time, some 900 PongSats are slated to go airborne October 5, launched for the first time from the Pecos County/West Texas Spaceport in Fort Stockton, Texas.
JP Aerospace will also conduct a ground launch of their MicroSat Launcher (ML) rocket for the inaugural opening of the Las Escaleras a las Estrellas ("The Stairs to the Stars") spaceport site in Fort Stockton. Behind this spaceport effort is the Fort Stockton Economic Development Corporation and the West Texas Spaceport Development Corporation.
Three separate balloons, each toting 300 of the table tennis balls, are to float upwards of 105,000 feet. "We've never flown this many and we're doing all these flights on the same day," Powell told SPACE.com.
A carbon framework underneath the balloon holds a rack of PongSats. Once at peak altitude, and within a few minutes of time after reaching that ultra-height, a command is given to release the balloon. The platform of PongSats then begins a one-half-hour descent, slowly drifting toward Earth under parachute.
"From start to finish it's about a 100-minute trip. We have recovery teams at the ready. We usually come down within about 15 miles (24-kilometers) from where we launched," Powell said.
Amazing experiments
Powell said there's a lot of theoretical talk regarding future nanosatellites. However, actually coming up with a Ping-Pong-sized payload, having a mission deadline, and then flying, "that is something real," he said.
There are plenty of ideas for PongSats, including comparing the growth of plants grown from seeds flown to the edge of space in near vacuum with seeds cultivated on terra firma.
In another experiment, a university student had a PongSat outfitted with a digital camera's flash RAM card. By studying the flipping of zeros and ones in the memory card, the unit served as an ultra-light, inexpensive, and highly accurate cosmic ray counter.
"Some of these student experiments are just amazing," Powell said. Other investigators have used undeveloped camera film to capture tracks of cosmic rays at high altitude, or measured temperature and pressure during a PongSat's mission. Then there's observing what high-altitude does to a mini-marshmallow, or giving a PongSat a simple "before and after" bounce test, he said.
PongSat classes and teams can create "mission patch" designs for their flight. Participants typically sign their PongSat prior to launch. PongSats are flown at no cost to the student or school.
Neglected suborbital space
Powell said the upper atmosphere is a kind of neglected suborbital space. "It has always been viewed as just this empty place that you fly through. But now it's known that all kinds of things happen there," he said.
"It is a very complex area," Powell noted. It turns out there's life sitting up there in the form of microbes, forming this large biosphere, he said
"It's a layer 20 miles (32 kilometers) thick around the whole planet," Powell said.
While the upcoming PongSat flights are part of an educational pursuit of JP Aerospace, there's a business in high-altitude ballooning.
The company is really flying high thanks to a recent U.S. Air Force contract.
Work is underway at JP Aerospace on the Ascender, a hybrid aircraft for flight at the upper most part of the atmosphere, as well as the Vee Airship. These type vehicles are of interest to the U.S. Air Force Space Battle Laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They are focused on perfecting a near-space maneuvering vehicle, Powell said.
As for Powell himself, he envisions huge aerial platforms anchored high above Earth.
"That's where we think 'spaceports' should benot on the ground, but parked right at the edge of space," Powell said.
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