A local elementary school took their science project above and beyond the text books on Thursday.
Dry Creek Elementary School launched a weather balloon into the stratosphere with a payload of experiments on board.
The launch was conducted by a group of 5th grade STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) students, and was witnessed by the entire student body.
9NEWS was invited to document the adventure, capturing a unique perspective of the launch with their drone camera.
“I looked around at the whole school, and everybody was smiling and looking up, and there was a sense of awe in them,” said STEM teacher Jen Hager. “That’s what teaching is about, showing kids that sense of awe, and astounding them with the things that they can see around them.”
The balloon quickly rose into the jet stream and sailed into the Stratosphere at 75,000 feet of altitude. Two GoPros on board captured stunning views of the darkness of space hugging the curvature of the Earth.
“This is very special, we’re very fortunate. I’ve been on a waiting list for a couple of years to get it at Dry Creek because there’s only so many schools that can do it,” said Hager.
A weather sensor took measurements of the atmosphere’s temperature, humidity and pressure at all levels of the atmosphere - just like the weather balloons that the National Weather Service launches twice every day.
But this launch wasn’t all about weather. The kids also tethered a couple of other science experiments to this cosmic vessel.
A cage of mealworms made the journey to near-space. Having survived brief exposure to the fringed temperatures and high pressure of the stratosphere, the kids plan to compare them to a group of worms that stayed cozied up in their Cherry Creek classroom.
A batch of seeds were split in half before the launch. Some stayed at the school, and the rest were launched. The kids will now plant them all and see if there are any differences in the way they grow.
So, it was very important for the school to recover the balloon as quickly as possible and return it to the kids for data analysis.
Armed with a GPS tracking smartphone app, two teachers and one student headed south with the prevailing winds.
“We got a notification when the balloon popped, and when it hits the ground we’ll get the coordinates,” said Joel Kufeldt, a 5th grade teacher at Dry Creek Elementary.
Hager and Kufeldt, along with Kufeldt’s 5th grade son Cody, tracked the falling balloon to a private ranch just southeast of Fountain, Colorado.
“The land owner was really cool and granted us permission to go on his property and search for our payload. He seemed pretty amazed that it was his ranch that was the final landing spot for something that we launched from Denver,” said Kufeldt.
9NEWS was happy to help this Dry Creek crew locate their downed craft and launched Drone9 once again to get a birds-eye view of the El Paso County ranch.
After a one-hour drive and an hour and a half search, the crash site was located, and the science experiments were found without any damage.
“This was a great opportunity for us to take science to another level at our school, and be more hands on,” said Hager.
“Today was an awesome day. A pivotal point in my teaching career that I will always remember,” said Kufeldt.