The High Altitude Student Platform (HASP) as a Model Multi-Payload Carrier and Workforce Development Opportunity
Abstract
A significant advantage of balloon flights over satellite or sounding rocket flights is that a balloon payload can be exposed to a near-space environment for hours to days, recovered, improved, and then flown again. This means that high risk is acceptable for balloon payloads, allowing designs to be tested and refined with only low levels of review and quality assurance. In turn, the costs and time required for instrument development are reduced. These characteristics allow balloon payloads to be ideal platforms for training students. Indeed, for many decades university students have been involved with balloon-borne scientific instruments resulting in advanced degree dissertations and a subsequent career in aerospace related science and/or engineering. In addition, over the last several years, interest in developing miniaturized satellites, with low mass, power, and telemetry requirements, has significantly increased. An inexpensive method for the testing and validation of "nanosat" components, or full systems, would be to fly them on a balloon platform at 125,000 feet. These systems could be clustered onto a single balloon payload carrier that provides standardized power, telemetry, and a physical interface for each experiment, reducing the cost of a flight per payload. Further, if student teams are involved in the instruments on a multi-payload balloon platform, then the number of students gaining from an experiential hands-on flight opportunity per balloon flight can be increased. Here we report on our experience with the High Altitude Student Platform (HASP), the first balloon carrier specifically designed with a standard interface to support up to 12 independent experiments per flight. Since 2006, HASP has flown 13 times from Ft. Sumner, New Mexico and carried more than one hundred and ten (110) experiments to an altitude of 120,000 feet for an average duration of 15 hours at float. To date over 1,200 students from 47 institutions across 22 states plus Puerto Rico, Canada, Belgium, and the United Kingdon have been involved in development a HASP experiment. We will discuss the HASP system design, development and capabilities, the kinds of experiments that have flown on HASP, and the lessons-learned that are applicable to future multiple payload balloon platforms and workforce development flight opportunities.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.P41C3750G
- Keywords:
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- 0394 Instruments and techniques;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0994 Instruments and techniques;
- EXPLORATION GEOPHYSICSDE: 6297 Instruments and techniques;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTSDE: 7594 Instruments and techniques;
- SOLAR PHYSICS;
- ASTROPHYSICS;
- AND ASTRONOMY