Montana State University and the Montana Space Grant Consortium are leaders in the field of high-altitude scientific ballooning. In 2022, the Science Math Resource Center was proud to join as the educational partner on a NASA-funded project called the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project, or NEBP.

The Science Math Resource Center leads the educational aspects the project and has helped create a series of online lessons for the incoming teams as well as opportunities for students to also practice the non-technical skills that complement STEM projects, such as science communications, teamwork and leadership, project management, and diversity, equity and inclusion.

What is scientific ballooning?

Since the early 2000s, scientific ballooning has been a common hands-on STEM learning activity in the US. Academic ballooning uses weather balloons carrying payloads of experiments weighing a total of less than 12 pounds to altitudes of approximately 100,000 feet.

At these altitudes – above 99.5% of the atmosphere – payloads experience a space-like environment. Typical academic ballooning types can be generalized into two categories:

1) radiosondes and

2) balloons carrying payloads engineered by students, or “engineering platforms.”

Radiosondes are small standardized commercial off-the-shelf payloads of less than 190 grams that are used to measure atmospheric parameters through the stratosphere. Engineering balloon platforms are capable of lifting up to 12 pounds of student built payloads into the stratosphere. Typical engineering platform experiments include atmospheric measurements, photography, cosmic radiation measurements, and space technology proofs of concept.

What is NEBP?

NEBP stands for the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project

Montana State University is the lead institution for a NASA-funded project that will broaden participation of STEM learners by immersing teams from a wide range of higher education institutions in an innovative NASA-mission-like adventure in data acquisition and analysis through scientific ballooning during the Oct. 14, 2023 annular and April 8, 2024 total solar eclipses. This project replicates similar flights done in 2017, 2019 and 2020 (see links to previous projects)

 

The Science Math Resource Center is leading the educational team for the project and has helped create a series of online lessons for the incoming teams as well as several Learning Pathways modules for students who want to dive deeply into the non-technical skills that complement STEM work: science communications, teamwork and leadership, project management, and diversity, equity and inclusion.

What learning resources are available?

NEBP offers dozens of lessons, all posted online and with free access, that are designed to cover all aspects of scientific ballooning for either an atmospheric science team or an engineering team that plans to fly during the solar eclipses. Some of the content is quite technical, such as: payloads, electronics and radio communications, and how the atmospheric science teams hope to observe gravity waves during the eclipses.

However, some of these lessons will be useful for anyone who wants to learn more about scientific ballooning, including teachers and students! Below, we list some recommended resources from the NEBP Learning Library.

The NEBP project offers an Introduction to Ballooning lesson that would be useful for any teachers or classrooms that want to know more. The lesson is free to access and includes a video and slide deck on "Overview to Lighter-than-Air Ballooning" as well as a short video and slide deck called "Introduction to Stratospheric Weather Ballooning." The lesson also includes links to other SciAct projects related to eclipses, including the Eclipse Soundscapes Citizen Science Project.

Lesson 2 also offers a 90-minute deep dive into how a teacher can get started: Visit Stratospheric Ballooning for Educators: Getting Started

Other lessons in the series offer deeper technical content on the ballooning payloads, electronics and radio communications as well as how the teams hope to observe gravity waves during the eclipses. To see all the lessons, visit http://eclipse.montana.edu and click Learning Resources in the sidebar to choose either the Atmospheric Science or the Engineering course. The introductory lessons are the same for both courses.

Lesson 3 Eclipses and Heliophysics includes introductory information on different types of eclipses, as well as crucial information from heliophysics -- the study of the nature of the Sun and how it influences the very nature of space. This lesson alsoexamines historical and cultural worldviews of eclipses and includes some current citizen science projects involving eclipses.

If you use these resources will you let us know? Please email Suzi Taylor - taylor@montana - or you can use the feedback form at the bottom of each lesson.

NASA TechRise at Huntley Project School

Huntley Project School and science teacher Brandi Norman have been chosen -- for the second year in a row -- for NASA's TechRise Student Challenge, which offers student teams the chance to fly an experiment on a NASA stratospheric balloon. The students designed an experiment that explores ultravioletradiation. View it (and others) on the NASA TechRise site. Huntley Project's is called Color for the Beads.