Now introducing PongSat 2, live on Kickstarter! On September 27, 2014 we are going to send 2000 student projects to the edge of space. 2000 students will build experiments, art and projects that will be carried above the world by balloon. Please help us by contributing to our campaign today!
All of the projects fit inside ping pong balls. We call them PongSats. Students from all over the world send us their PongSats we fly them to 100,000 feet on weather balloons. After the landing the PongSats are returned to their creators along with data from the flight a DVD with video of the launch and on board scenes and a certificate showing they flew.
I’m always completely floored by the project folks put in their PongSats. Projects have ranged from plant seeds to full upper atmospheric labs all in a ping pong ball. My favorite is the marshmallow. You put a marshmallow inside the ping pong ball. At 100,000 feet the marshmallow puffs up completely filling the ball. Then it freeze dries. The student gets to hold in her hand the direct results of traveling the top of the atmosphere.
PongSats are flown at no cost to the participant. Over a thousand students and other PongSat builders are signed up so far for this September. We will launch the PongSats from the Black Rock desert in Nevada. The vehicles that carry them are called High Racks. They are made of foam and carbon fiber. We have four separate telemetry links to the High Rack tracking it during the flight. At the end of the flight we release the balloon and the High Rack descends by parachute.
We land anywhere from 20 to 200 miles away from the launch site. After landing the recover teams with 4wd’s head out across the Sierra Nevada mountains to bring the high racks back. Help us inspire, motivate and enable the next 2000 explorers and share in the amazement of what is achieved. JP Aerospace is an all volunteer DIY space program. We have flown over 14,000 PongSats so far. With your help we are going to fly two thousand more this September.
Please share our campaign with friends and family to help us reach our goal. Thank you!
www.kickstarter.com
