April 18: world day of launching balloons into the stratosphere

The Global Space Balloon Challenge organization announced the launch of an international educational competition for launching balloons into space (the stratosphere). Invited to participate activists from around the world.

Prizes are awarded in three categories: the best design, the best photo and the highest lift.


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Participation in the competition is free. The organizers note that a ball with equipment will cost 200-700 dollars, so the competition is quite democratic: students and schoolchildren can participate. List of materials, see here .

Each team that participates in the competition must launch a balloon from April 18 to April 21. The ball must be equipped with at least a GPS transmitter and a camera for shooting. Each team must have at least two people: such a requirement is present for safety reasons, because pumping a balloon with helium / hydrogen can be dangerous for one person, as well as searching for a fallen basket. Experience shows that the basket can land in hard-to-reach places: mountains, lakes, oceans, deserts, and so on.

Registration of teams is carried out on the official site .



It is better to choose the time for launch taking into account the proposed route of the ball, which can be calculated on the sites http://predict.habhub.org/ and http://weather.uwyo.edu/polar/balloon_traj.html .