Strato Lab One

I had the immense urge to send something to space. I wasn’t sure how, but I decided to make a group called Mission Cube with the ambitious goal of sending a CubeSat to space. I was impatient and just wanted to get something up there as fast as possible. So I announced to the group that exactly 6 months from now we will be launching a weather balloon on exactly June 10th without exemption. This was the closest I figured I could get to space on a low budget.

Over the next few months the group expanded to roughly 30 students across the US each with a task to contribute towards launching the weather balloon. The planned experiments included high altitude bacteria sampling, UV/Co2/Temperature/Pressure recording experiments, and the testing of a variety of DIY CubeSat parts. The icing on top was that I thought it would be funny to place a bunch of Twikinies in view of the GoPro on the balloon.

Three weeks before the launch date I find out from everyone that they can’t make it to the launch. In addition to that I find out everyone didn’t complete their task except for one person who designed the bacteria sampling mechanism (Thank You Luca!). I was sent into a panic about what to do, but I was determined. I wasn’t going to let this go without a fight.

Over those few sleepless weeks I worked as hard as I possibly could on the payload. My room looked like the lab of a mad scientist, packed full of folding tables with narrow alleyways that I could barely fit through to get in and out. During this time I also managed to study and get my ham radio license in 3 days needed for the most important aspect, the tracking.

After searching the web I finally managed to get in contact with two weather balloonists in San Diego. I drove over 400 miles to launch my weather balloon with them from the parking lot there. I will never forget the moment when I retrieved it in the middle of the desert and frantically opened the GoPro to see the beautiful curvature of the earth from 96,000ft.

After my experience a company I was working with heard about it and decided to turn it into the documentary you see above.