Where: USI Business and Engineering Center Room 1005
Launch: Southern Illinois
Landing: Gibson County, Indiana
The engineering design and analysis class at the University of Southern Indiana will be conducting its 10th high altitude balloon flight, during which the class will make a second attempt to set a world record for the highest altitude release of a paper airplane. The first attempt on October 27 failed when the balloon ruptured before its target altitude.
The current record is held by The Register’s Special Projects Bureau in the United Kingdom. The record was set in October 2010 with the launch of their PARIS Vulture 1 spaceplane. The Register recently learned about USI’s attempt to the break the record and will be following and reporting on the project from the UK. You can see the full story in the The Register at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/26/paper_aircraft_attempt/.
The USI class plans to launch the balloon from a site near Rend Lake in Southern Illinois. The landing and retrieval is expected to take place somewhere in Southern Gibson County in Indiana.
Mission Control for the event will be located in USI’s Business and Engineering Center Room 1005. Interested parties will be able to view the launch and the flight trajectory of both the balloon and the paper airplane.
The trajectory of the balloon can be viewed online at http://aprs.fi using the call sign W9MOK.
The trajectory of the paper airplane can also be followed using the call sign W9MOK-2.
