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

Here are a few videos from the balloon launch. The first two are from the launch and the second two are from just before recovery.

Oh, did I mention we have a ULCape Youtube Channel? Stay tuned for more video and pictures from the launch.

After weeks of long and hard work by Balloon 2, and support from the CAPE team, and many stressful hours of late night work, Balloon 2, Crawsat I, was launched today, January 31st, 2009, from Lake Charles. Launch Photos Below:

The Balloon was released at approximately 8:34 AM, with a course towards Donaldsonville, Louisiana. Below is the course of the final descent, and landing into the Mississippi River (of all places in the area!), after the cut down mechanism was initiated.

After an hour of scanning the river attempting a sighting, we finally got a visual near Sunshine Bridge (great name! ), and were able to get the payload back after recieving help from small boat near by. Photos of Recovery below:

The Balloon was recovered at approximately 12:35PM. We will be posting more photos of the launch, and videos of the launch and recovery in the coming days, so be on the look out for more posts from myself and other people with videos and photos.

Once again, I’d like to thank all the members of the Launch, Tracking, and Recovery teams, and those that took time out to track the Balloon alongside us from their respective homes and offices, your support was invaluable in making this operation all the more successful. Also special thanks to our friends Jim and Damon from LSU, who helped us get a barge to go to the center of the river to recover our payload package, and the National Weather Service, and Jimmy Nunn, the Hydrometeorological Technician, who helped set up the balloon for launch.

Also one more thank you is in order, for the Balloon 2 team as a whole, along with the other members of CAPE involved in the work leading up to today. Without your hard work, and dedication, late at night and all weekend, over the last month, we would never have had such a successful mission!

P.S: Balloon 3, now it’s our turn to get to work!