Two balloons carrying citizen science experiments travelled 120 km from Calamocha to the Sierra de Alcubierre
The first balloon reached 32,251 metres, the second 32,658 metres, bursting south of Fuentes de Ebro
This Saturday the Servet citizen science project launched two helium balloons carrying 15 experiments made by students from the town of Calamocha, in Teruel. The event brought together more than 200 attendees, including participants and local people.
Both launches were a success despite the strong wind, which made take-off difficult and created some tense moments. The first balloon left Calamocha shortly after 11:00 in the morning and the second 10 minutes later. The balloons burst south of Fuentes de Ebro at a little over 32,000 metres and landed in the Sierra de Alcubierre, which complicated the search for the capsules. The balloons flew over Aragon for about an hour and a half.
A team from the organisation travelled to the landing point and recovered all the capsules, which were handed over to each of the teams, starting the process of analysing the data obtained.
Servet reached its tenth edition with this Saturday’s launches, and it is a project carried out with the collaboration of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology – Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
The Calamocha Fairground was the place chosen to inflate the balloons, join the capsules together and explain the experiments to the media and curious onlookers, who were able to see up close what citizen science is. This edition of Servet involved 16 schools from seven autonomous communities (Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, the Canary Islands, Castile and León, Catalonia and La Rioja).
Recovering the capsules to analyse the data
On Saturday afternoon the students received their capsules at Etopia (Zaragoza) and began to analyse the data collected by sensors, cameras and other objects the capsules included, such as seeds or a segment of mandarin.
The experiments are very varied: for example, detecting water resources in the launch area to fight fires, another that consists of checking the effectiveness of medicines outside the Earth, or another that will paint a picture in the stratosphere. The students also asked themselves questions such as: Why is the sky blue? or Can a biodegradable material such as mycelium withstand the conditions of the stratosphere?
Servet is a citizen science project that began in 2017 to democratise access to space, involving a whole community of enthusiasts of astronautics, space navigation and anything that moves above 12,000 metres above sea level. It is a project of the University of Zaragoza through the Aragon Engineering Research Institute (I3A) and the Ibercivis Foundation. It also has the support of Etopia, Centre for Art and Technology, the CESAR Laboratories at Etopia and the Spanish Radio Amateurs Union. The organisers thank Calamocha Town Council, the Government of Aragon and the Calamocha Fair Institution for providing the venue and helping to publicise the event.
Press release