Space Hardware Club
UAH HASP Instrument, Fall 2006
Several students at UAH spent their summer building a flight instrument for the High Altitude Student
Platform (HASP).
Watch the flight realtime with CosmoCam.
The UAH/HASP instrument is a system of three infrared detectors that point up towards the balloon. The intention of
the experiment is to measure the temperature of the balloon skin during flight. Thermal changes during flight cause
fluctuations in the balloon's flight dynamics (primarily altitude). High altitude balloons are an interesting but complex thermodynamics problem because there are many heating and cooling processes simultaneously affecting the system (solar heating, deep space cooling, Earth heating, etc.). The UAH/HASP instrument will hopefully bring us a step closer in the understanding of this system.
The UAH/HASP instrument team is extremely grateful to the Louisiana Space Grant and LSU for providing the flight platform, the Alabama Space Grant Consortium for providing funding, UAH for their support via the summer REU program, the NSSTC for their guidance and laboratory support and to Dr. Jessica Gaskin for all the time she enthusiastically provided to the student team.
Vacuum and cold tests at NSSTC
Integration testing at LSU
Integration with the gondola in Ft. Sumner, N.M.
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