Students send balloon to space

A group of grade nine students have lifted a balloon all the way to space.

As part of a four month project, ninth grade students at Dr. Knox Middle School, with help from fourth and fifth grade students at Bankhead Elementary, recorded the journey of a balloon on its mission high into the sky.

Students spent weeks planning and constructing the balloon before it was launched at Dr. Knox on October 28, 2013. The balloon was strapped with three video cameras, GPS trackers and a flight data recorder. School mascots were also aboard - a falcon emblem from Dr. Knox and a bulldog from Bankhead.

The balloon reached an approximate height of 95,000 feet before bursting in Canadian airspace over Similkameen River. The balloon parachuted and was then carried by strong winds of over 100 km per hour over the border, touching down in the Cascade Mountains of Washington. The full flight was between 4-6 hours in length.

The following week, two teachers at Dr. Knox took on the lofty task of locating the balloon, driving across the boarder and hiking up the mountain.

Once the footage was retrieved, grade nine production students edited the feed and created videos. Grade four and five students voiced over the videos.

“It was a really cool and fun project,” said grade nine student Nicholas Oumsted. “I learned a lot and it was especially fun to be a part of the launch team.”