High-Altitude Ballooning Team Challenge

The North Carolina Space Grant High-Altitude Ballooning Challenge tasks community college teams with designing, building, and launching scientific payloads to the edge of space. By following the NASA design cycle, students gain hands-on engineering experience through a year-long competition that culminates in a statewide flight and retrieval event.

In 2014, North Carolina Space Grant developed and implemented a High Altitude Ballooning Challenge and competition for community college teams. This program has seen significant success, with several colleges now incorporating ballooning design into their permanent STEM curriculum. One participating team has even progressed to compete in advanced national ballooning activities.

Student teams incorporate the NASA design cycle to design, build, test, and fly a scientific experiment onboard a high-altitude balloon payload. Throughout the process, teams gather monthly for telecom sessions that serve as a forum to monitor progress and address technical questions. At the end of the academic year, teams that complete the critical design and build phases launch their payloads at a statewide balloon launch and retrieval competition.