At 9am on Monday, 24 August four year 11 students from Cockermouth School successfully launched a balloon from Mosser that reached a height of 36,000m into the stratosphere.
Jack Scott said: “We’re over the moon that we managed to launch the balloon successfully. It has been months to plan for this day, and then the weather delayed our launch date too. The launch day wasn’t without its’ challenges, but we did it! The balloon managed to reach a height of 36,000m before it popped, which far exceeded our expectations.
“Our team mate Joe was in the ‘chase car’ that followed the balloon. Fortunately, it fell pretty much where we predicted. It was a bit of trek up a hill in Arkengarthdale near Richmond in the Yorkshire Dales but it had a soft landing thankfully so all the cameras and sensors are still intact. We’re really looking forward to analysing the data now.”
All four were jubilant and delighted with the successful launch and retrieval. During their flight the balloon’s radio transmissions were picked up by radio enthusiasts as far away as Belgium and France. The students have recorded 5,000 separate data readings taken during the flight.
The sixteen year olds, Joe Moore, Jack Scott, Natasha Stannett and Poppy Watson, supervised by Jonathan Moore, have spent the past twelve weeks planning the launch. Now they have the data to analyse and a report to write as part of the CREST Gold Award.
Following the success of their project the four teenagers have decided that they will set up a grant-giving fund to be called the John Dalton Science Fund.
Poppy Watson said of the idea: “We have had an amazing experience and learnt so much about science, planning and teamwork. We believe that this type of project should be available to more young people in the UK. We were lucky because our project was sponsored, but others may struggle to raise the necessary funds. We would like to try to raise £1,000 to donate to other science projects. We have named our balloon and we have decided to name our fundraising after John Dalton. John Dalton is a brilliant scientist who was born locally to where all the members of our team live.”
The Balloon X Cumbria blog can be found at www.balloonx.edublogs.org
