Yesterday, Wednesday, shortly before 10 a.m., the sunglass-wearing heads of students, teachers and numerous parents were already stretching towards the sky when a murmur made its way over the sports field of the Ramingtal middle school: At the exact moment when the okay from AustroControl and the Federal Army for the launch of the weather balloon had arrived, a gust of wind drove the already floating measuring instruments towards the several meter high fence.
The team around project coordinator Gerald Ehegartner remained cool despite this. The balloon and instruments were carefully pulled into a suitable area, then the weather balloon, filled with more than 4,000 liters of helium, began to rise towards space and slowly disappeared from the gaze of the amazed audience.
It is a unique experience that the school is offering its young people with this scientific experiment, says Ehegartner: “Following an idea from Manuel Nedbal, the father of one of our students, we have sent this probe, equipped with a wealth of technology, up into the stratosphere on a balloon to an estimated height of 36,000 meters.”
Awakening the joy of research
According to calculations using the Stratoflight app, the weather balloon should have burst after about two hours, after expanding to four times its volume. Another 45 minutes later, the probe attached to a parachute with GPS trackers, air measuring instruments, UV sensors, a camera and the part in which physical and chemical experiments are carried out should have landed in the Zwettl area in the Waldviertel, where a search team wanted to pick it up. But here too, fate intervened as a joker and spoilsport, as Ehegartner told the Steyrer Zeitung after four and a half hours: “Unfortunately, the forecasts were wrong. The balloon rose longer and higher, and is now supposed to land in the Linz area.” However, he had already been with the search team in the Yspertal valley north of Ybbs.
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Image: win
Source: Nachrichten
