ELY - On Wednesday, October 19, Ely eighth graders launched a high altitude balloon into the stratosphere. The Timberwolves 5 Weather Balloon was the fifth annual balloon launch for the students. The launch took place on the Ely Weather Balloon Launching Platform (also known as the Baseball Field).
The eighth graders had a variety of jobs ranging from live feed tracking, social media updates, tape master and balloon inflation technicians. The students designed an experiment to determine if there would be a difference in preserving raw or hard boiled eggs in the low pressure and temperature of the stratosphere. They hypothesized that a small amount of air present in the egg would expand and shatter the brittle shell. A parachute, two GPS trackers, cameras and the egg experiment were attached to the balloon prior to launch.
The balloon was predicted to ascend slowly before popping at an altitude of around 22000 meters or about 13 miles up--about double the cruising altitude of most trans-oceanic passenger jets. Predictions also indicated this would take place somewhere over Duluth, and the balloon would begin its long fall back to Earth.
While the eggs didn’t explode in flight, the eggs were both cracked when pulled out of the tree they landed in. When the balloon finally popped at its highest altitude of over 71,660 feet, the payload began to fall at about 50mph. One student remarked, “Those were probably the fastest eggs in the world!”
The class was able to acquire some beautiful photos of Lake Superior and the north woods as the payload with multiple cameras onboard floated over the northland. The launch took place at 10:52am and the balloon landed two and a half hours later outside of Solon Springs Wisconsin which is 37 miles southeast of Duluth.