A trio of Pennsylvania middle school girls is asking for help recovering a data pack from a STEM balloon launched in June for a school project that they believe landed somewhere along the Mason-Dixon line in either Harford County or York County, Pa.
The girls, residents of Swarthmore, Pa., in the southwestern Philadelphia suburbs, launched the helium filled, high altitude balloon from Ephrata, Pa., in Lancaster County, on June 19.
The balloon trailed a small, molded plastic foam container that contained a camera and other data recording devices, according to Steve DiNardo, whose daughter, Abby, is one of the girls involved in the project. Abby and her classmate Julia Durian are rising eighth-graders at Strath Haven Middle School in Wallingford, Pa.; Abigail Kanes, the third member of the team, is a rising eighth-grader at The Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pa.
The balloon was followed by radio telemetry to an altitude of 110,500 feet where it burst and the data pack descended under a small red and blue parachute. The girls followed the descent to 2,500 feet, where they lost contact. The last position taken was in the vicinity of McDermott and Buckwheat roads in York County, just east of Fawn Grove village and within a mile or less of the border with Harford County.
"Over this past year, the girls learned some coding, electronics - wiring, soldering and circuitry - and other STEM skills as they cooperated to design and fly a high altitude (helium) balloon, with payload, to 'near-space,' where a camera would capture breathtaking views of the curve of the earth, as well as the division between our atmosphere and space," Steve DiNardo explained in an email.
DiNardo, a professor of cell and developmental biology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, says the girls are anxious to recover the 1-foot by 1-foot data pack. He sent emails to both the York and Harford County governments asking that they pass information on to residents not to be alarmed if they come across the package and provided a contact telephone number (610-304-4259) and email (sdinardo1118@gmail.com). There also may be remnants of the beige colored balloon and or the red and blue parachute.
"It's a fun project and it's really been a blast involving electronics, math and some coding," he said by telephone Friday morning. "We do very much want to retrieve the payload and get the pictures and data. It's a little sad we don't have it, but we are hopeful it's still out there."
DiNardo said the girls spent one day searching in the rural area where they believe the data pack landed, dropping by homes with cookies as they made their search. He said they "projected" the landing point was in a small woodland, but after he and his daughter returned on a subsequent search one Sunday afternoon, the data package remains missing.
"It's possible it hung up in the tree canopy or came down in the brush; we just don't know," he said. Their backup plan, he added, is to wait until leaves drop in the fall and hike through the area again looking for the package in the bare trees and fields.