ISU’s HABET breaks altitude record

Members of the HABET team prepare for a high-altitude balloon mission.

Iowa State University’s HABET (High Altitude Balloon Experiments in Technology) team recently broke the ISU altitude record of 118,352 feet with a balloon spacecraft that reached 121,793 feet.  Part of ISU’s Space Systems and Controls Lab (SSCL), the HABET program has had a close working relationship with the Iowa Space Grant Consortium (ISGC), a NASA-supported organization that promotes aerospace education and research.

The previous ISU record, of 118,352 feet, was set in July of 2005.  The HABET program is now in fifth place nationwide, according to Melissa Wiechert, public relations manager of the SSCL and a senior in aerospace engineering at ISU.  To date, HABET has flown over 120 high-altitude flights and more than 40 tethered flights.   

The program was started in 1993 by the Central Iowa Technical Society, an amateur radio organization, and subsequently became a part of ISU’s Spacecraft Systems and Operations Laboratory, now the SSCL.  Students who participate in HABET design and build the payloads flown.  “We do the projects for fun and to gain the engineering experience of actually designing and building something,” said Wiechert.

HABET combines both the engineering and operations aspects of flying high-altitude balloons, according to Matthew Nelson, chief design and operations engineer of the SSCL.  For the engineering dimension, students learn about integrating various hardware into the spacecraft, design and build the spacecraft’s electronics and the structure itself, and write the software used to predict where the flight will go and to track the balloon. 

Photo taken by LX-120-A in near-space

“On the operations side, students learn the importance of having set procedures so that flights are safe and successful,” said Nelson.  “The value of a program like HABET is that students gain real-life experience in both leadership and engineering.”   

Current payloads include remote sensing, obtaining high-quality images and video, testing new hardware for ISU’s cubesat project (CySAT), and the rockoon, a combination rocket and balloon designed to give the rocket maximum altitude.  Applications of the rockoon include the study of the upper atmosphere and the delivery of suborbital payloads at a cost below that of a ground launch. 

Because payloads now are broader in scope, students from departments other than aerospace engineering are involved in various projects.  HABET has also collaborated with groups outside ISU, including NASA Ames Center and Stanford University’s Space and Systems Development Laboratory.   Since the program began, only one payload has not been recovered, and HABET maintains a perfect safety record.  All students involved in the program are required to take some basic training to participate in launches.

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