The Space Minor has designed a special program that allows any student in the Space Minor an opportunity to build a balloon payload and launch it to the edge of space! Students are challenged to design, fabricate, launch, recover, and analyze data from balloon payloads.
This is a chance for any student to learn foundational skills through a series of modules to complete a balloon payload. This will be a fast-paced, self-motivated program, in which students are responsible for completing all the modules in order to move on to complete their own balloon payload and be ready to launch that balloon payload at the beginning of November.
This Fall 2023, we will be kicking off another year of this program, and encourage any student that has completed the course Pathway to Space (ASEN 1969) to apply! There will be limited spots available!
Deadline for fall 2023 applications is September 7th at midnight.
Questions? email spaceminor@colorado.edu
Frequently Asked Questions
Building Upon Firsthand Foundational Skills: A program to help students from any background and major learn the tools needed to create their own balloon payload.
Unfortunately at this time, we are only allowing students who have gone through the required Space Minor course to be eligible for the program. But once you have completed the Pathway to Space (ASEN 1969) course, please be sure to apply for the program!
Yes! We encourage students who wish to participate to apply as many times as it takes to get selected. We unfortunately can only have so many students participate in the program each semester due to supplies, and spots on the balloon launch.
Yes, depending on how the pilot goes this fall, we hope to have this program offered to students at least yearly, if not mulitple times a year, so be sure to check back with us in the coming semesters.
At this time, students do not need to pay anything to participate in the program.
GoPro Images of Fall '20 Flight
100% of the participants said they would recommend the Balloon Payload program to a Friend!
Here are some of the comments the participants had:
-"Thank you for the opportunity! I have never done anything like this in my life."
-"Really appreciate this opportunity. I thought it was fun, and I learned a lot. I was hesitant to join at first since I had no experience, but really glad I signed up."
-"I learned a lot, thanks to everyone who put it together!!"
-"I am a senior and I just felt lucky to be a part of this program. This was really a once in a lifetime opportunity and I am so glad that I got to be involved in this program. What made it fun is I got to see it all come full circle. From building it, to launching it, to recovering it, to gathering my data, I really got to see the whole process from start to finish and it was super cool!!!!"
-"I thought it was really great :)"
-"This was fantastic."