Engineering Commons^™

The Use Of Low-Cost ‘Balloonsats’ For Stem Education With 3d Printing, Jeremy Straub, Josh Berk, John Nordlie, Ronald Marsh

Jeremy Straub

A new technology, known as 3D printing, allows the rap-id fabrication of plastic structures of virtually any config-uration. These structures are light-weight, dura-ble and inexpensive. This paper considers the utility of utilizing 3D printing to create enclosures for ‘BalloonSats’ – small, low-cost spacecraft analog which can be utilized by students to understand space engi-neering, conduct near-space science (e.g., physics, bio-logical and other experiments) and touch the edge of space.

The Use Of Solar Balloons At Und As A Low-Cost Alternative To Helium Balloons For Small Spacecraft Testing And Stem Education, John Nordlie, Jeremy Straub, Chris Theisen, Ronald Marsh

Jeremy Straub

Helium-filled latex weather balloons have been utilized for many years to carry small satellite prototypes and subsystems into the stratosphere to allow testing in a “near space” (stratospheric) environment. A variety of environmental factors similar to the space environment can be found in this region, such as a rarified atmosphere, increased thermal stress including very low temperatures, increased solar radiation, the necessity of remote command and control, tracking, and telemetering of data. While this method of flight testing has been well-proven, a recent increase in the price of helium has driven the cost of such test programs to much higher …

The Use Of 3d Printing To Enable High Altitude Balloon Missions, Jeremy Straub

Jeremy Straub

The 3D printing technology allows the low-cost creation of structures based on user-defined configuration parameters. Unlike other plastic-forming technologies, there is no tooling cost related to the creation of a mold. Because of this, highly-customized structures can be created with a minimum production quantity of one, allowing adaptation to individual mission needs (for a single-HAB mission) or the change of the structure across a multi-unit run (e.g., to test various configurations or as part of a study requiring multiple payloads with different configurations).

This paper considers the mission possibilities enabled by the use of 3D printing for HAB structures. These …

Solar Ballooning: A Low-Cost Alternative To Helium Balloons For Small Spacecraft Testing, John Nordlie, Jeremy Straub, Chris Theisen, Ronald Marsh

Jeremy Straub

Helium-filled latex weather balloons have been utilized to carry small satellite prototypes and subsystems into the stratosphere to allow testing in a “near space” environment. This provides a variety of environmental factors similar to the space environment, such as a rarified atmosphere, increased thermal stress, increased solar radiation, the necessity of remote command and control, tracking, and telemetering of data. While this method of flight testing has been well-proven, a recent spike in the price of helium has driven the cost of such test programs to much higher levels. In this poster, an alternative technology to provide the flight mechanism, …

Operating Standards For The High Altitude Ballooning Community, Jeremy Straub, John Nordlie, Ernest Anderson

Jeremy Straub

This paper provides an overview of work to define a set of standards for adoption by the academic high altitude balloon community. These standards go above-and-beyond the requirements imposed by §101 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, incorporating best practices and suggesting how §101 requirements should be interpreted and applied in several situations.

One area where FAR§101 is extremely vague is with regards to the operations of balloons with small payloads. These payloads are exempt from most requirements; however, they are required to not create a “hazard”. Problematically, what exactly qualifies as a “hazard” is not defined in FAR§101 or elsewhere …

The North Dakota Space Robotics Program: Teaching Spacecraft Development Skills To Students Statewide With High Altitude Ballooning, Jeremy Straub, Ronald Fevig

Jeremy Straub

The University of North Dakota is serving as the lead institution in a statewide effort to develop student spacecraft engineering skills. This effort, which is part of the North Dakota Space Robotics Program (NDSRP), provides students the ability to participate in the design, development and fabrication of a small satellite analog that is launched by a high altitude balloon. The first iteration of the NDSRP Near-Spacecraft Project is generating a functional prototype of a remote sensing payload, which will perform onboard image processing. This project included undergraduate and graduate students from two institutions and five different academic departments. The students …

Formalizing Mission Analysis And Design Techniques For High Altitude Ballooning, Jeremy Straub, Ronald Fevig

Jeremy Straub

High altitude balloon (HAB) missions can be and are used to teach concepts related to spacecraft and satellite design. A HAB mission, however, presents unique characteristics, which must be understood and respected to produce a desirable outcome. Because of this, flying an unaltered satellite design as a HAB payload would be as undesirable as utilizing an unaltered HAB design as a satellite. A well-defined process for HAB mission design is thus needed. The process presented mirrors commonly used space mission design processes to facilitate easy transition between the two. It is also comparatively simple, due to the smaller scale of …