Community College High-Altitude Ballooning Teams Fly High in Annual Challenge

June 7, 2023 Sascha Medina 3-min. read

South Piedmont Community College’s photo won the Best Photo award, which was taken from 72,000 feet. Credit: South Piedmont Community College

Teams from across the state gathered at Catawba Valley Community College in late March to compete in the 2023 North Carolina Space Grant Community College High-Altitude Ballooning Challenge (HABC). Teams received various awards ranging from Highest Altitude to Best Photo. Wake Technical Community College’s high-altitude ballooning team won the Best Overall Team award.

Since October 2022, nine teams had been preparing for this challenge and incorporated the NASA engineering process to design, build, test, launch and recover a scientific experiment onboard a high-altitude balloon payload.

Due to weather conditions, teams did not launch their balloons on the day of the challenge. Instead, taking advantage of being together, teams practiced properly inflating balloons and assembled their payloads to simulate a launch.

In the weeks after the challenge day, teams individually launched their high-altitude balloons on sunny days with clear skies.

“I was very impressed with the quality of the engineering of the payloads for all the teams,” Doug Knight, program coordinator of the High-Altitude Ballooning Challenge, said. “Much thought and work was put into this project by all and I want to commend everyone that participated in the competition.”

Students finish the program with hands-on scientific experience and gain not only technical skills but also teamwork, communication and leadership skills.

“Students are the engineers, scientists, and managers for their teams,” Jobi Cook, associate director of NC Space Grant, said. “Through this program, they are building marketable real-world skills valuable to NASA and to aviation and aerospace industries.”

Best Overall

Knight notes Wake Technical Community College’s organization, engineering design and documentation as qualities that helped the team stand out and ultimately win the Best Overall Award. The team also received co-honors for the Best Preparation to Fly Award.

Wake Tech video about the team’s participation in the challenge. Credit: Wake Technical Community College

Hessam Ghassemi, program coordinator for the Engineering Program and faculty member at Wake Tech, led the team, but explains it was driven by the students. They did the planning, strategy and execution of the project. On the launch day, the team’s balloon reached over 80,000 feet.

“The team was very excited to learn we won Best Overall,” said Ghassemi. “The students put in a lot of work and also got good feedback from the judges periodically, so they were hopeful they’d win the award.”

A view of above from Wake Technical Community College’s high-altitude balloon. Credit: Wake Tech Community College

Award Lineup

In addition to the Best Overall Award, teams competed for several other awards. NC Space Grant is pleased to announce the following awards.

Best Overall Payload: Mitchell Community College

Highest Altitude Award: Edgecombe Community College

Edgecombe Community College recorded the highest altitude reaching 88,390 feet.

Closest to Predicted Landing Site Award: Edgecombe Community College

Edgecombe Community College watched their payload come back to Earth landing less than 0.426 mile from their predicted landing point.

Best Outreach: Edgecombe Community College

Edgecombe Community College held five outreach events and reached over 220 students.

Best Photo: South Piedmont Community College

Best Video: Edgecombe Community College

Edgecombe Community College’s balloon bursting with the Moon in the background. Credit: Edgecombe Community College

Best Preparation to Fly: Mitchell Community College & Wake Technical Community College

NC Space Grant intends to host the challenge again in 2024 and hopes to see returning and new teams.

“I hope more community colleges show up to this,” Ghassemi said. “In addition to taking classes, students want to get more experience gaining transferable technical and soft skills.”