Student experiential ballooning projects generally involve teams of participants working in close proximity to develop balloon payloads, groups of personnel to prepare the balloon string for launch and support flight operations, plus interactions with property owners and municipal authorities in the field during balloon string recovery.  Since spring of 2020, attempts to curb COVID-19 infections have resulted in severe restrictions on the size of groups, personal interactions, and institution shutdowns.  This panel will explore the impact of these restrictions on student ballooning programs and methods for mitigating risk while providing an experiential program for students during these COVID-19 times.

Moderator

T. Gregory Guzik

T. Gregory Guzik is the Director of the Louisiana Space Grant / NASA EPSCoR program and has been involved with both scientific and student ballooning activities for over 30 years.  His scientific career has focused on astrophysical energetic particles including large (~6,000 pound) class cosmic ray balloon instruments launched in northern Manitoba and several long duration balloon flights in Antarctica. Dr. Guzik developed and currently manages both the Louisiana Aerospace Catalyst Experiences for Students (LaACES) entry-level experiential student ballooning program as well as the advanced High Altitude Student Program (HASP). He currently serves on the NASA Scientific Ballooning Roadmap Program Analysis Group advising on workforce development issues.

Panelist

James Flaten

James Flaten serves as the Associate Director of NASA’s Minnesota Space Grant Consortium (MnSGC). He has run stratospheric ballooning activities out of the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities since 2007 and also helps train/advise ballooning groups around the state (and beyond). COVID-19 suspended his ballooning flight operations from March through early July, but then he received permission to resume “socially-distant ballooning operations” so he has been doing launches with small teams of students (driving in separate vehicles) ever since. He is currently teaching a freshman seminar on stratospheric ballooning, with a class flight still planned for later this fall.

Erick Agrimson

Professor Agrimson has been doing HAB work since the fall of 2009 with over 60 flights to date having been completed. St. Catherine University had our all women’s team investigating atmospheric changes during the 2017 total solar eclipse with a team of 5 undergraduates and two alumna returning to the program to mentor students during this phenomenal event. Due to the COVID-19 changes this summer we conducted virtual ballooning. A team of collaborative undergraduate researchers (being mostly new to ballooning) selected a HAB literature review and assisted in planning for the upcoming eclipses this summer in this environment. 

Aaron Ryan

Aaron Ryan is a graduate student at Louisiana State University (LSU) that works with the Louisiana Space Consortium (LaSPACE). He assisted in transitioning the Louisiana Aerosphace Catalyst Experience for Students (LaACES) program to remote payload development environment. LaSPACE was able to conduct a balloon launch of several student payloads from multiple Louisiana universities in early August while by maintaining social distancing and PPE during launch and recovery operations. Starting in September of 2020 LaSPACE will be teaching an online version of the LaACES program for student ballooning teams at institutions across Louisiana.

Jeanne Garriz

Jeanne Garriz is a 3rd year undergraduate student at Louisiana State University. She participated in a student ballooning course and was the project manager of a student payload development team during the 2019-2020 school year. The flight and preceding deliverables were postponed due to COVID-19, and the team transitioned to remote work on the payload beginning in April 2020. The payload was eventually flown in August. She will continue to work for the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium on another balloon payload beginning this fall. 

Matthew Nelson

Matthew Nelson serves as the President of the Stratospheric Ballooning Association and is also a faculty member at Iowa State University in the Aerospace Engineering department.  There, Matthew serves as the Assistant Director to the Iowa Space Grant Consortium and as the Director of the Make to Innovate program.  Under the Make to Innovate program, he supervises several student hands on projects including the High Altitude Ballooning Experiments in Technology (HABET) and their CubeSat project, CySat.  Matthew has been doing HAB launches since 2006 and recently the HABET team has been developing a remote launch setup in order to continue launches during the COVID-19 Pandemic.  In addition he and another faculty was awarded funding through ISGC for a new base program that will include promoting HAB and getting K-12 and higher education more involved in HAB and using HAB to promote STEM.