Garden City goes to space

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This article was published 21/02/2016 (3003 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Garden City Collegiate staff and students are exploring the edge of space.

On April 29 at an undetermined location, the Garden City Space Agency will launch a high altitude balloon approximately 31,000 metres into the air into a region called near space.

It will be GCSA’s second near space mission, as the group launched a similar craft from Morden, Man. last spring, alongside Shaftesbury, Fort Richmond, Maples and St. James high schools.

Gabe Kraljevic, one of five Garden City teachers participating in the project, said this year’s GCSA is made up of about 25 students. Kraljevic said he hopes to build on the success of last year’s mission.

“Last year we could only get a temperature probe working with an Arduino (computer hardware). We were very new to this,” Kraljevic said.

“This year we’ve expanded. Now we have two people learning to use Arduinos, so we’ll have way more sensors collecting data, gas sensors, a Geiger counter (which measures ionizing radiation), an excelometer so we can tell how fast we’re going up and down, and also we’ll be able to measure humidity and air pressure.

“We sent last year’s up with three cameras, one pointing up, one sideways, one down. We got five hours of video footage. We’re doing the same this year.”

GSAC is split into a number of teams, including flight, payload, telemetry, photography, science, data and public relations, with teacher supervisors assigned to different groups. Kraljevic said the teams have specific roles but must work together to have success.

“For instance, the payload team builds the bus, a container that takes everything up and brings it back,” Kraljevic said. “They’re concerned about making sure everything fits. They’re also concerned about the mass. We have a strict limit of 1.5 kilograms. Their job is to say ‘OK, what are we putting in here? You guys are overweight. You have to drop some weight.’”

Last year, GCSA also sent up tardigrades, also known as water bears, which are water-dwelling, eight-legged micro-animals.

“There was research saying they could survive in space, so we tried a mini-experiment, sending them up in the payload,” GCSA member Zoe Santos-Diaz said.

“We had multiple vials and we put two in each and we gave the vials copper and lead coatings, and one with not coating. Through the experiment we got one back alive and it was from the one with no coating.”

GSAC instructor Steve Carson said he thinks experience will pay off this year. In 2015, Carson oversaw the payload, science and photography teams, but is switching roles with Kraljevic, taking over the flight and data teams.

“When we prepare on the day of the launch, we’re in two separate spots, the payload team and the flight team, and we’re so busy we don’t really see what the other team is doing. I think switching this year will be very valuable.”