ENGLISH

On 27.06.2015, at 12:51, the StratosChem team launched their high altitude balloon for the second time. Filled with 5500 liters of helium, once again aiming to reach the height of 30000 meters and perform the „Elephant’s Toothpaste“ experiment to claim the title of World’s first stratospheric science theatre experiment.
Around two and a half hours after the launch, at 15:18, the balloon landed in a forest near the 151 kilometer mark of the Tallinn-Tartu-Võru-Luhamaa highway. The container had landed in the branches of a tree around fifteen meters from the ground, 200 meters from the road. Reaching the container took the team another thirty minutes, as they had to move through swampy and ingrown terrain.
The recovered footage of the onboard cameras proved that the flight went as planned and at the height of 30000 meters, the World’s first science theatre experiment in the stratosphere was successfully carried out. To receive the Guiness World Record title, the team has to submit proof along with their footage of the event to the committee. It can take up to four months for the decision to be made whether or not to give StratosChem the title.

According to on-board temperature sensors, the environment was the coldest at 17400 meters, where the outside temperature was -41 degrees Celsius. The container’s peak altitude 34500 meters from sea level and the average speed was 55 km/h with the maximum being 122 km/h.



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On Saturday, the 27-th of June, a balloon heading towards the stratosphere will be launched by the youth of Viljandi. This is second balloon flying to the stratosphere from StratosChem team. Our first attempt failed because of the faulty balloon which bursted prematurely. The balloon has a payload containing the popular science theatre experiment Elephant’s Toothpaste. The balloon is scheduled to be launched on midday (09:00 UTC) from the Kikka golf course near Viljandi (58.397193, 25.640477 / https://goo.gl/puFvry).

The exact time of launch may change depending on the wind direction, the estimated time window for this will be around 10:00-13:00 local time).
The aim of the balloon is to reach an altitude of about 32000m and conduct the experiment at an altitude of around 30000m. The duration of the flight will be around 2-3 hours and the current estimated landing site is somewhere near Kurgja – http://goo.gl/Qe3N2C.

Throughout the entire flight, telemetric information will be broadcasted by the balloon’s container. It will be visible from StratosChem’s homepage at http://stratoschem.eu and also at http://tracker.habhub.org (flight named SCHEM).

The task of dechyphering the broadcasted information will be managed by the DI-Fldigi (HAB mode) application (go to https://ukhas.org.uk/projects:dl-fldigi to learn more about receiving signals and automatically broadcasting them to the web). The flight will be listed as an ongoing flight in the “Flights” section of the webpage when you launch the application.
Flight name: SCHEM
Frequency: 434.075 MHz (during our testing we received it at ~434.083 MHz, so expect to spend a little time fine tuning when attempting to catch the drifting signal).
RTTY, 50 baud rate, 600Hz shift (testing has proven this may vary a little), 8 bits per symbol, without parity, two stop-bits.

We sincerely hope that we can count on Your help to help us get our container back home to receive proof of our World record setting experiment! Happy hunting!

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The youth of Viljandi took the Eurovision song contest into the stratosphere just few hours before the finals!

On 23.05.2015 at 11.45, the StratosChem team launched their weather balloon from a golf course near Viljandi. Equipped with the popular “Elephant’s toothpaste” experiment, the goal of the balloon was to reach an altitude of 30000 meters and become the first in the World to successfully conduct a science theatre experiment in the stratosphere!
Little bit more than 1 hour after the launch, the team recovered the StratosChem container including video footage of the flight 106 kilometers from the launch site. The team was disappointed to discover, that the record-setting stratospheric experiment wasn’t actually carried out due to certain technical issues and premature balloon burst.
In addition to the the experiment, the youth also included logo of the Eurovision Song Contest to celebrate the 60th Eurovision song contest and also an Estonian flag to support Stig Rästa and Elina Born, representing Estonia in the finals with their song “Goodbye to Yesterday”.
This means that in addition to all the supporters on land, the Estonians also have a certain heavenly support from a height of no less than 22175 meters.
Short video of the flight including the Eurovision symbolics can be seen at http://youtu.be/60RhCpbF6DY
The StratosChem team members wish the best of luck to all the participants in the Eurovision Song Contest, but are mainly rooting for the representatives of their home country – Estonia.

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On Saturday, the 23-rd of May, a balloon heading towards the stratosphere will be launched by the youth of Viljandi. The balloon has a payload containing the popular science theatre experiment Elephant’s Toothpaste – which goes to the Stratosphere for the first time ever!

The balloon is scheduled to be launched on midday (09:00 UTC) from the Kikka golf course near Viljandi (58.397193 25.640477 / https://goo.gl/puFvry).

The exact time of launch may change depending on the wind direction, the estimated time window for this will be around 10:00-13:00 local time).

The aim of the balloon is to reach an altitude of about 34000m and conduct the experiment at an altitude of around 30000m. The duration of the flight will be around 2-3 hours and the current estimated landing site is somewhere in the North-Eastern region of Estonia (http://puu.sh/hUz1N/082a71a02c.png).

Throughout the entire fright, telemetric information will be broadcasted by the balloon’s container. It will be visible from StratosChem’s homepage at http://stratoschem.eu and also at http://tracker.habhub.org .

The task of dechyphering the broadcasted information will be managed by the DI-Fldigi (HAB mode) application (go to https://ukhas.org.uk/projects:dl-fldigi to learn more about receiving signals and automatically broadcasting them to the web). The flight will be listed as an ongoing flight in the “Flights” section of the webpage when you launch the application.

Flight name: SCHEM

Frequency: 434.075 MHz (during our testing we received it at ~434.083 MHz, so expect to spend a little time fine tuning when attempting to catch the drifting signal).

RTTY, 50 baud rate, 600Hz shift (testing has proven this may vary a little), 8 bits per symbol, without parity, two stop-bits.

 

We sincerely hope that we can count on Your help to help us get our container back home to receive proof of our World record setting experiment! Happy hunting!