2012-4 Weather Balloon #2 Recovered
So here's the full scoop on the weather balloon. We're not quite sure how high it went but best guess is somewhere in the 80,000 to 100,000 feet range or 15 to 19 miles (by comparison an airplane flies at around 35,000 feet). The flight was roughly 2 hours, and 40 minutes - a 2 hour, 17 minute ascent followed by a 23 minute descent. Launched on November 23, 2012 and recovered April 16, 2012.
It was recovered in Plymouth, Indiana - roughly 85 miles as the crow flies from the launch point in Humboldt Park in Chicago. Recovered by a farmer plowing his fields to get ready to plant corn.
We ended up with about 330 photos and a 2+ hour video of the flight. We got great shots of downtown Chicago, the Lake Michigan shoreline, some great near space shots and then some cool sunset shots during the descent. It's impossible to pick my favorites so the whole thing is posted on the link below. I'd really recommend setting it on slide show at 2 second intervals. It's a cool ten minutes.
Apr 17, 2012
Photos: 325
RSS
