Anchorage Daily News

Hey kids! Need a nifty science fair project? Neal Brown wants to lift your ideas to new heights.

The former rocket range manager and Alaska Space Grant Program director is a principal behind a new Alaska science and education effort, the Balloon Experiment And Research Program, or BEAR for short.

Members last month sent a weather balloon more than 18 miles into the sky above Fairbanks and around September will make flights available for payloads designed by science-minded high school and college students.

"There's lots of things the students can build and fly," Brown said.

The space grant program is a NASA-funded consortium of the three main University of Alaska campuses, Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage's Imaginarium science museum, and Kenai's Challenger Learning Center.

The balloon research program is a joint project of the space grant program and the Fairbanks-based Arctic Amateur Radio Club, which provides key logistics support to track flights and payloads recovery.

Brown retired May 28 after 45 years at the University of Alaska Fairbanks but plans to be a mentor in the balloon program for at least three years. About 30 states have balloon programs that combine education and science and work with radio clubs, including Colorado's Edge of Space Sciences, which has operated since 1995. They present a potential for serious research.

"With a balloon, you can get above 97 percent of the Earth's atmosphere," Brown said.

The balloon launched May 10 was a standard 1,800-gram helium weather balloon, about 8 feet in diameter at liftoff, the same balloon launched daily at 3 a.m. and 3 p.m. by the National Weather Service in Anchorage, Brown said.

The balloons are designed to fall apart and cause no harm if hit by aircraft. As added precautions, the BEAR balloon carried a radar reflector and was launched from Poker Flat Research Range, the UAF rocket range 30 miles north of Fairbanks, which Brown managed for 18 years.

Two payloads on the first flight carried radio transmitters wired to global positioning units and broadcast altitude, latitude and longitude. They were built and designed by Dan Wietchy of the radio club.

"Both of them worked perfectly," Brown said.

The third payload was Brown's digital camera. Set to a timer, it took photos and video, including a magnificent shot of Fairbanks, the Tanana River and Mount McKinley from 73,000 feet.

"Nobody's ever taken that picture before," he said.

Together the three book-size payloads weighed less than 4 pounds, but the balloon can lift 12 pounds without posing a hazard.

What was remarkable about the launch in Alaska, Brown said, is that the payload touched down just 7 miles from the launch site. Researchers in other states launch balloons and hop in their cars for a chase of 100 to 200 miles, Brown said.

For half the year, winds at high altitudes above Fairbanks blow 300 mph east to west. The other half of the year, they blow west to east. But in May and September, the winds hardly blow at all, a plus for recovering a payload.

"It will literally go up and come back very close to where you launch it from," he said.

The BEAR balloon ascended for three hours and reached 95,327 feet. At that point the balloon burst, triggering a parachute and what Brown had projected to be an hourlong descent.

But instead of shattering, much of the balloon remained intact -- it weighed just 2 ounces less than at launch -- and the parachute descended in a little more than a half hour.

Students who design science projects could investigate all sorts of phenomena from a vantage point so high you can see the curve of the Earth, such as the effect of ultraviolet light on colors or what thin air does to sound, Brown said.

Students will have to design equipment that can stand up to the cold.

"It's about 60 below when you get up above 65,000 feet," he said.

According to the university, faculty from the Geophysical Institute are interested in designing graduate-level courses that will take advantage of the flights to bolster hands-on student research.

Brown said Alaska's nearly 24 hours of solar power could be useful for providing power for flights of long duration or distance.

Alaska Space Grant Program:

www.uaf.edu/asgp

Edge of Space Sciences:

www.eoss.org

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