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Show r 1 HE SIGNPOST FEATURES T V Tuesday, July 28, 2009 'T, >" 4 kes a deep look into space SOURCE: HARBOR Team, panorama by Run Proctor Students and professors send weather balloon into atmosphere By Samantha Neri Asst. news editor I The Signpost On July 19, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar orbit, Armstrong was headed back to space. Not Neil Armstrong the first man on the moon, but John Armstrong, a Weber State University Associate Professor of Physics. •While he wasn't on a spacecraft he was the professor in charge of a weather balloon sent into the atmosphere. However, John placed a photo of Neil Armstrong's footprint on the moon into one of the equipment boxes attached to the balloon. This was the second launch for HARBOR (High Altitude Reconnaissance Balloon for Outreach and Research). With two cameras, a video recorder, and equipment used to track the-gear, the group of Weber State University students reached new heights when the weather balloon they sent in the air reached over 98,000. After finding where the- balloon and equipment landed, the group gathered information from the flight and will now analyze the information. "We post it on the internet," WSU junior in Physics Charla Boom said, "then we do analysis." Analysis consists of comparing data with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA sends disposable weather balloons up. in the atmosphere every day. In some places up to four balloons are sent, but in the Salt Lake City area only one is sent into the air. "First step is to compare [information] to make sure it is consistent," Boom, who is also organizing and interpreting the data found from the flight, said. "If it isn't consistent, that means there is something wrong." According to Boom, the data received from NOAA is gathered every minute. For HARBOR'S balloon, data is received close to every three seconds. After comparing the data, Boom will look for anomalies in the data. "The first flight [last year] we found a temperature .. inversion," Boom said. "That was really unusual. I •'• ' am working on , ; linking it to the \ fires in California that year. Last year the fires in California burned v over 600,000 acres, •: this year it is only some 30,000 acres that have burned." Through comparing time, altitude, and data of the temperature with the pictures gathered, members of HARBOR noticed a haze correlating with a temperature inversion, "The temperature went down and then up again and that isn't normal," Boom said. "We try to figure out anything we can from the data we take." Armstrong said all the data files HARBOR has are, published on the Internet. "We publish all the data we can," Armstrong said, "but it is hard to put the entire eight gigabytes of images we have on the web. We do put a selection." The data is archived and made public. Anyone can download the information. The data found will be published and eventually presented at conferences. HARBOR was founded a year ago. "This is technically our second flight to altitude," Armstrong said. "We have done a number of tethered flights and a number of shorter flights but this is our second big launch." The launch last July went up 79,000 feet in the air. This year the flight went 98,432 feet in the air and lasted 140 minutes. From video taken during the flight, the members of HARBOR found out the balloon and equipment attached to the balloon in boxes moved a lot more than they thought. The video which helped the. group make the discovery can be seen on the HARBOR website. The equipment used for the flight was either built by the students or bought on the advice of the students. Cameras were used to take pictures of the flight and had to be taken apart to get them to activate electronically instead of manually. "[The cameras] are off-the-shelf stuff that has been hotwired," Ron Proctor, who is involved with HARBOR and is the production coordinator for Ott Planetarium, said. "They have made a circuit that triggers every so often. Students soldered the leads directly to the shutter." •The flight was tracked using equipment called CATS (Command and Telemetry System)-which is the primary GPS receiver and transmitter and controls the cameras- and BATS (Balloon Auxiliary Transmitter System)-which is also a GPS receiver and transmitter. "We have redundant systems," Armstrong said. "In case one fails, we can still find the balloon. We try to follow the same guidelines that NASA would do for a moon mission. Everything is redundant, everything has checklists, and everything is tested. Everything is configured ahead of time and tested at real conditions." For part of the time, a problem occurred with CATS, and because of the redundancy in the equipment, BATS was sending data back to HARBOR. Other problems with the equipment come from the launches. Wires can break from the movement inside of the boxes sent up with the balloon. "It is common for the wires to break," Boom said. "Eventually after so many years of repairing the wires, the wires are going to get shorter and shorter, and we will have to replace them." Other .wear on the equipment can come from temperature variances in the atmosphere. "It can get as cold as minus 60 degrees centigrade," Armstrong said. "We have to test the equipment the best we can and put it in insulated boxes. The conditions are like what you would find on the surface of Mars.'The students have to figure a way to deal with that." HARBOR, a sister program to BOREALIS, which is operated by the Montana Space Grant Consortium at Montana State University, is a privately funded group at WSU. The group consists of students and professorsfromWSU. The next launch will happen Aug. 1 to 5 at Starvation Lake State Park in DuchesneT file morning of Aug. 2 will be the first launch of the week. The public is invited to attend. For more information, to see pictures, or to see a video from last week's flight, visit HARBOR'S website at space.weber.edu/harbor or find the Facebook group page by searching WSU HARBOR. Comment on this story.at wsusignpost.com. Lunar Landing? An Astrobiologist By ShayLynne Clark Features Editor I The,Signpost John Armstrong is a physics professor at Weber State University. He received a Ph.D in astronomy and astrobiology from the University of Washington, and his astrological sign is an aquarius. The Signpost: What is astrobiology? John Armstrong; Astrobiology, the way I would like to say it, is the study of life in the universe. A lot of people think when you put 'astro' in front of biology or 'astro' in front of physics, that it is the study of physics or biology outside of the earth, but since the earth is in the universe, the study of life on earth is also astrobiology. This is good because right now we don't know of any other life in the universe, so astrobiology would be a very dull field of study at the moment if we didn't include life on earth. In fact, I just came back from Yellowstone, and one of the things that is really cool about up there is that they actually study astrobiology by studying the organisms in the hot geysers and in the pools. They are doing real experiments of life in extreme environments right here on earth. SP: What got you interested in astrobiology? JA: I have always been interested in astronomy and planetary science, like looking at the planets. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut and all that kind of stuff. What got me interested in astrobiology was the fact that as soon as I entered school, we had just discovered See Astrobiologist page 6 PHOTO SOURCE-. SPACE.VVEBER.EDU/HARBOR Weber State University professor John Armstrong preparing the parachute for the weather balloon take-off. July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr. descended from the Eagle's ladder, and made contact Whenever I hear two public with our.mooris surface. In doing so, Armstrong coined figures argue (i.e. Oprah Winfrey the famous phrase, "That's one small and Barbara Walters on 'The View*), I have felt comfortable suspecting that step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." both of them were wrong about Although everything (most of the time). this' phrase is However, in this case, I must recognized by take a side. almost every As a child my mother American over knowingly deceived the age of three, its me about seemingly legitimacy is being innocuous things such challenged. as the Easter buriny, the M a n y tooth fairy, and Santa c o nspiracy Claus. theorists argue My elementary that the lunar school teacher did landing never things differently. happened, and She taught me that it was simply a about concepts Hollywood farce. like gravity and At first, I could see their addition, and point (Hollywood is able to the lunar landing- do some pretty magnificent all seeming fanciful things in this era of computer and on par with generated imagery), but after Santa, but verified researching the box office by various hits of 1969 and thereabouts, textbooks and I seriously doubt that authorities. Hollywood, or our government To my (or the Soviets for that matter) knowledge, my had any technology capable of third grade teacher, my creating a good slasher movie, mother and Neil Armstrong are let alone a lunar landing. not part of a worldwide conspiracy In 1968, director Stanley Kubrick aimed at faking outer space journeys and subsequently trying to convince released the riveting science fiction the world at large of their validity. On See Lunar page 6 By ShayLynne Clark Features Editor I The Signpost |