Heisenbär's Journey Towards Outer Space

For about 20 high school students, the 28th of March 2023 was the day their hard work finally paid off. For months, the students had been puzzling over the construction of a stratospheric balloon in class. How does the balloon have to be designed to successfully launch into the air? What happens to the balloon when it floats in the stratosphere?The balloon was ready for launch and the weather played into the young scientists' hands. The long-awaited launch had been postponed several times before.

With the help of the Arduino MKR, a special microcontroller platform, the students had developed their own electronics, which they attached to the flying object together with a standard commercial data collector. Using this, the helium-filled balloon collected data from an altitude of around 38 kilometers and made a video recording of the stratosphere. The spectacular footage can be admired on the project team's Instagram account.

The technical equipment recorded data such as altitude, air pressure and location data of the flight route. Based on this data, the students and teachers could read the course of the outside and inside temperature, the air pressure, the ozone content in the atmosphere and also the light radiation in the infrared, UV and visible range. In order to precisely record how the balloon moves during its ascent and immediately after bursting, the inclination and rotation angles of the balloon were recorded several times per second in all three direction, taking into account the altitude winds. All the technology had been safely installed by the the students; a special housing protected it from the weather conditions in the stratosphere.

Physics teacher Frank Hill, who was responsible for the launch of the first stratosphere balloon at the Werner Heisenberg Gymnasium in 2021 together with physics teacher Markus Grashof, shared the students’ excitement: "We are very excited to see how the launch of our second stratosphere balloon will go and whether it will rise even higher than the first one. Our team has been working very hard on the project. As a result we are confident of getting exciting footage of the flight and interesting new insights into the stratosphere. We look forward to evaluating this data in class and project work and sharing it with the world."

After taking off, it took about two hours for the balloon to cross the troposphere - the lowest layer of the atmosphere - and ascend to the upper stratosphere. With increasing altitude, the air pressure decreases more and more. This causes the balloon to expand further and further until it finally bursts. The students had expected this and therefore equipped the balloon with a parachute, with the help of which it could slowly descend to the earth’s surface. In Heusenstamm, about 200 kilometers away from the high school, the balloon landed in the immediate surroundings of a main road. Thanks to a satellite-based GPS transmitter, position data was sent every two and a half minutes during the descent. In addition, the WHG team had installed a second GPS transmitter that communicated the balloon's position after landing. Shortly after, the team secured the data-collecting technology.

As a gesture of gratitude to their sponsors LANXESS and Niesen, the students had sent the so-called "Heisenbär" along on the journey. The bear was adorned with a LANXESS headband and the logos of the logistics company.

LANXESS made the flight of the Werner-Heisenberg-Gymnasium's stratosphere balloon possible with a generous donation. Nina Hasenkamp, head of the education initiative emphasises: "Projects like these can awaken young people's interest in science and thus increase the chance of inspiring the next generation to pursue a successful future in these fields. We are proud to support initiatives that make school classes more lively and exciting, and thereby promote enthusiasm for science and technology."

For those interested and enthusiastic, click here for more information on the project, ranging from the idea from 2021 to the launch of the first balloon to the analysis of the data.