High School Students Can Send Experiments Flying with NASA

CLEVELAND — NASA is inviting student teams nationwide to design and build an experiment or technology demonstration to be sent to the near space environment of the stratosphere, an altitude of 100,000 feet. The Balloonsat High Altitude Flight competition will launch on a NASA weather balloon May 25-27 in Cleveland.

To participate, student teams in grades nine through 12 must submit a research or flight demonstration proposal to NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland by Friday, Feb. 19. Teams of four or more may pursue a wide variety of topics in this competition, including science and weather observations, remote sensing and image processing. A panel of engineers and scientists at Glenn will evaluate and select four top-ranked proposals by Friday, March 5.

The top four teams will be awarded travel expenses and up to $1,000 to develop their flight experiment or technology demonstration. Teams will participate in three flight days to release, track and recover their experiments. In addition, students will tour Glenn facilities and present their findings at Glenn’s Balloonsat Symposium. All participants visiting NASA must be U.S. citizens.

NASA will host an informational webcast about the competition Jan. 27 from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. EST. A link to the webcast and additional information about Balloonsat High Altitude Flight is available at: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/balloonsat

This and similar education programs help NASA attract and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines critical to the agency’s future missions.

NASA’s student Balloonsat competition is sponsored by Teaching From Space, a NASA Education Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Educational Programs Office at Glenn and the Ohio Space Grant Consortium.

For more information about NASA’s education programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/education

For information about NASA’s Glenn Research Center, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/glenn