Greetings All,

Well the end has finally come for CrawSat III. This past weekend, on Saturday, February 5th, 2011 the CrawSat III High Altitude Weather Balloon Project was successfully launched out of Lake Charles, Louisiana around 12:20 PM, and landed in the Homochitto National Forest in the state of Mississippi nearly three hours later, where it was found stuck in a tree. Through help from a local citizen of the area, the Recovery Teams were able to successfully retrieve the package with very little damage.

- Predicted Flight Path

- Launch Team Preparing to release Balloon

- Launch Team Preparing to release Balloon

- Launch Video

- Photo from bottom camera during flight

- Photo from side camera during flight

- Balloon Package stuck in tree

- Recovery Team and Local Mississippian who helped retrieve package from the tree with package

Also a link to the full Launch Day Gallery may be found here:
http://gallery.ulcape.org/v/CrawSat+3/LaunchDayFeb5th2011/

We would just like to take this moment to thank the following people for their help in making this happen:
CrawSat III development team: Casey Boudreaux, Ethan Olivier, Rizwan Merchant, Dustin Muse, Chase Savoy, Louis Courville

Launch Team: Chase Savoy, Casey Boudreaux, Ethan Olivier, Matthew Dupuis

Ground Station Team: Rizwan Merchant, Nick Pugh, Trey Oliver

Recovery Team 1: Jeremy Guillory, Alex Wehmann, Eric Rohner

Recovery Team 2: Lorenzo Evans, Matthew Triche

Recovery Team 3: Patrick Dellinger, Adam Hebert, Ricky Schexnayder

The locals of Mississippi for helping recover the package

Plane Team: Dustin Muse, Louis Courville

Pilot for Plane: Les Henderson

Photographers: Ashley Isabelle Yelveton, Beth Guillet

The Lake Charles National Weather Station and their Staff

NP Moss Middle Schools Students for making the PearlSats

Northside Highschool for their payload add on to the CrawSat III

The ULL Chemistry Department and Dr. August Gallo for their donation of Liquid Nitrogen for the Cold Test

The ULL Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering Department for providing us lab space and the chance to work on this project

and a very special thanks to Nick Pugh for many a long night of helping, mentoring, teaching us, and pushing us beyond our expectations to reach for the skies and fly.

Sincerely,
Rizwan Merchant
Flight Director
CrawSat III

Test conducted at University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Parking Tower to check if the ascent rate functionality on the CrawSat 3 package works.

The end result is a conclusion that this test was a success!

Well after a month and four attempts later, the Range Test for the CrawSat III project was a success. Below are a few pictures of the team on the Chase Tower in downtown Lafayette performing the test.

Link to rest of Photos: Gallery

Next up, the Cold Test!