Smoky Treasure Valley

Our near space mission on July 30th took place while the Treasure Valley was swamped in smoke from forest fires. Below is one of the images we recorded.

You'll see more at the report on my website, http://www.nearsys.com/arhab/flightdata/2016/g/index.htm

Near infrared Quadcopter Flight

I've uploaded a video to the NearSys channel on YouTube. The video is of a Quadcopter and the near infrared video it recorded. NIR is a part of the spectrum that chlorophyll reflects strongly. In the video you can see that farm fields have healthy and well watered plants while the house lots near my house are full of dry grasses.

The video is at, https://youtu.be/EO1FZEUbZJE

NearSys Flight 2016F

The most recent near space flight of NearSys occurred on July 2nd. On this mission the balloon reach 94,413 feet before bursting near Marsing, Idaho. One thing that made this flight unique is that it carried a thermal imager into near space, which I believe to be the first time a thermal imager has been to near space. Here is one of the images taken at 94,000 feet.

And here is the corresponding image from Google Earth.

You will notice that the Owyhee mountains appear in yellow. This is because they are a desert mountain range covered in dirt and dry grass. This means that they warm up very quickly in the sunlight. Canyons cutting through the mountain range appear as red streaks because they are protected from some sunlight and therefore a little bit cooler. Farmland, which is well irrigated and lush with green plants appears in blue and purple. This indicates that they are much cooler than dry dirt.

Latest Article in Nuts and Volts

Check out Nuts and Volts for June 2016. I published my 170th article and its about using a Quadcopter to test near space payloads. I plan another three Quadcopter/Near Space themed articles. http://www.nutsvolts.com/

Cumulonimbus Cloud Video

I just uploaded a video I animated of a rain cloud passing to the north of my house. Sill images for the video were taken every five seconds and then dumped into MS Paint. I hope next time to make a video of a rain cloud closer to home. Here's the Youtube link, https://youtu.be/ix6MS9cgLQ0

First Two Near Space Missions For 2016

NearSys launched two balloons on Saturday, May 14th. The first was for Boise Makeiteers and the Near Space Club at TVMSC. The second launch was for Cascade High School. The missions were successful and you can see the data collected from each mission at, http://nearsys.com/arhab/flightdata/2016/index.htm

I'm teaching 15 Idaho teachers how to make and use BalloonSats. The class is called iSTEM and for the class, I am creating BalloonSat kits. These kits contain all the electronics and tools to make a BalloonSat from scratch. Each BalloonSat will have three sensors to choose from, a camera, two temperature sensor array, and a temperature and relative humidity sensor array. With a little more funding, I can also add a LED photometer array, and a temperature and pressure array.

It takes a lot of stuff to make a fleet of BalloonSats.