High school students in Reno launch weather balloon, capture spectacular video

Reno, Nev. (News 4 & Fox 11) — Kids at Coral Academy of Science High School in Reno got a real life lesson in aerospace. They launched a weather balloon late last month as part of an engineering club experiment.

11 students and two staff members worked for four months to build the weather balloon and launch it into the sky early Saturday morning, April 29.

"There's a lot of different teams working on a lot of different parts and seeing it all come together and work really well was just the best part," said student Adrian Gonzalez.

The students made some of their own parts and outsourced others, like the helium and the 360 degree camera they affixed to the balloon to capture the nearly three and a half hour flight.

"It was very nerve-racking. We spent many months on the project, and it was just like, if it fails, what's going to happen now. A lot of hard work, a lot of money, a lot of effort into it so very nervous for the first few hours," said student Adarsh Anumalasetty.

The engineering club launched the weather balloon from Golden Eagle Regional Park in east Sparks. The balloon climbed to 116,434 feet in altitude, was in the air for three hours and 20 minutes, and reached temperatures of -34 degrees Fahrenheit. .

"It was a lot higher than our predictions actually. Weather balloons can go to altitude around 100,000 thousand feet. Ours went up to 116,000 feet," teacher Ismail Kullap said.

The balloon survived the parachute landing east of Fernley. It traveled a total of 51 miles from the take-off location.

"We had a GPS device on it, we were able to get a signal for every five minutes and it landed 20 miles east of Fernley at the top of the mountain," Kullap said.

The students drove out to recover the weather balloon and were happy to see it in one piece.

This was the first year Coral Academy's engineering club designed and launched a weather balloon. It was such a success, they plan to do it again.