Students of the NASA-funded afterschool NOVAS program in collaboration with Hi-Impact Consultancy in the UK recently launched a Labdisc with a high altitude weather balloon to the edge of space. The students’ mission was to take pictures of Earth from space. The Labdisc’s built-in sensors recorded a rich variety of in-flight data, including the upper atmosphere and enriching the students’ understanding of massive data changes in a short time-frame. 

“Considering the extreme conditions in near space, similar to those found on Mars with around 3% the atmospheric pressure at sea level and -60 °C, I was really surprised at what a rich data-set we got from the Labdisc.”

“The Labdisc provides a science gateway for kids who feel less involved and can’t connect to a picture of their place in the universe. The Labdisc is a tool that can engage every type of population in science, and in the Balloon Project students collaborated in scientific discoveries that they knew would make a difference.”
Dr. Steve Croft, UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab