~Grade 6th & 7th learners built the payload and sent it to space~
Bengaluru : Chaman Bhartiya School (CBS), a “WE LEAD” curriculum – based digitally equipped K-12 school situated in Bhartiya City, North Bengaluru, launched a high altitude balloon satellite on 27th February 2022, early morning at 3:45 AM at Center for Research and Education in Science and Technology (CREST) campus of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics located at Hoskote to commemorate National Science Day in memory of Sir C. V. Raman. The students were briefed about the payload on Friday, during school hours and spent 33 sessions to complete the payload. They built the entire payload in-house with the support of teachers specialised in space education.
The students were taught from the basics of Electronics, physics, mathematics and space education to be able to understand the entire process of the project. The objective behind the launch is to build a scientific payload that can collect pollution, radiation data through sensors and cameras and send a biological experiment to near space (25-30 km). This space program is designed to facilitate the development of leadership competencies such as problem-solving and collaboration.
The balloon crossed the Troposphere layer of the earth’s atmosphere and the flight duration was for 4 hours. The payload measured the pollution level and background radiation during the flight and recorded them for later study. The technical team tracked the balloon through GPS trackers, and it was estimated that the payload had crossed the troposphere and descended on Narsapura lake and then proceeded towards Kolar.
Speaking about the launch, Mr. Allan Andersen, Director, Chaman Bhartiya School, says, ‘An event like this motivates children to pursue ambitious projects in school. This experiment gives us an insight into how our students perceive learning and what more we can do to make learning playful and meaningful at the same time. We are introducing projects like space education for students from Grade 1 onwards under our Center of Creativity and Innovation next academic year. We believe in fueling our young learners’ minds with the right tools and resources to enable them to become the leader they wish to be.’ he says.
Our learners became aware that the balloons are launched for various purposes – like to study weather, the concentration of different oxides in the atmosphere, aerosols, moisture content, how temperature changes with different altitudes, etc. With such steps, we hope to generate curiosity and interest among learners towards science and space.’
Ranjini Sridhar, Head of IT says, ‘Space Education is integrated into our curriculum. Through such programs we seek to bring joy to the process of learning for subjects such as Science. It also enables students to experientially understand the subjects they are learning.’
6th & 7th Graders started this project around the month of August 2021 and worked on various concepts like atmospheric science, space environment, programming, circuit design, satellites, communication with satellites and electronics during this whole project. They had to wait for the perfect day and weather conditions to launch this Balloon into the stratosphere of the earth to analyze the data. Centre of creativity and innovation is a concept in which digital and analogue activities are integrated with academics. These concepts are based on design thinking in a creative space. The learners traverse 5 – stages of design thinking in a designated location within the school.
