Students Work to Perfect UNM Balloon Launch Capability

Curve of the Earth from bal­loon cam­era above
Cen­tral New Mexico

UNM’s Cen­ter for Con­fig­urable Space Microsys­tems (COSMIAC) is devel­op­ing the capa­bil­ity of launch­ing high alti­tude bal­loons to con­duct exper­i­ments in the ionosphere. 

Two stu­dents, Jacy Bit­soie a civil engi­neer­ing stu­dent from UNM and Cheryl Cham­bel­lan, a mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing stu­dent from New Mex­ico State Uni­ver­sity are per­fect­ing the Cen­ters launch and recov­ery capa­bil­i­ties in a series of launches this summer.

Slideshow of lat­est launch.

Craig Kief, aca­d­e­mic pro­grams and design ser­vices for COSMIAC and Brian Zufelt, in charge of small satel­lite and SPA devel­op­ment worked as advi­sors to the team.  COSMIAC is a Tier 1 research cen­ter in the Elec­tri­cal and Com­puter Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at UNM and a char­ter pro­gram of the Phillips Tech­nol­ogy Insti­tute of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehi­cles Direc­torate at Kirt­land Air Force Base in Albuquerque.

Media con­tact: Karen Went­worth (505) 277‑5627; email: kwent2@unm.edu