NASA Balloon Sonde Recovery

Caroline BennittAtec in the Community

Brian Durbin, Atec’s Vice President, and his kids helped a group from NASA recover their weather balloon and payload this past weekend.

NASA Balloon Sonde

Pictured: Kathleen and Robert Durbin with the NASA recovery team

BallonRecovery18AUG2013

 

The NASA Team drove out to Missouri City, TX  this past Sunday (August 11) and discovered  this CFH sonde floating in a small lake.  At that time, Brian Durbin and his kids Robert (16)  and Kathleen (12)  were on the lake testing their boat and long tail motor for a gator hunt next month. They were able to help retrieve the CFH for the team in very shallow water (about six inches.)  It turned out that their long-tail motor and shallow draft boat proved to be handy and just the ticket for recovery for the NASA team.

The recovered balloon (shown in the picture above) is a weather balloon-borne instrument package, launched to study ozone in the atmosphere to altitudes of 100,000 feet above the surface of the earth. See the photo and post on NASA’s website.