![\"\"](\"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/IMG_2606-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Clint Thomsen teaches at the Community Learning Center.\u00a0 The Community Learning Center is like a magnet school where students are able to attend for a few periods a day and take specialized classes that are not offered at their home school. The Community Learning Center is part of a Career Technical Education (CTE) program.\u00a0 Clint teaches IT classes including Linux, Ethical Hacking, Cyber Forensics, and Computer Systems.<\/p>\n
Students from a couple of CTE programs in the district recently sent off their 7th<\/sup> weather balloon on May 13, 2023.\u00a0 Usually, they launch up north in the Logan area because of larger areas to send and recover payloads, but the winds looked favorable to launch from Skull Valley (west of Tooele) and land in a ghost town called Iosepa.\u00a0 The various teams were tracking the balloon using LoRa, APRS, and Satellite.\u00a0 The balloon was extremely large, at the altitude that the balloon burst it had expanded to the size of a school bus.\u00a0 Because of this size it reached an unusually high altitude, that when it burst, they could see it from the ground.\u00a0 The parachute had been modified so as to bring the payload down quickly.<\/p>\n Upon the successful collection of their balloon, they were able to download pictures\/video from the cameras as well as download the data from their sensors.<\/p>\n Congratulations on a successful launch and retrieval of your payload this year.<\/p>\n The story for the Community Learning Center does not end here.\u00a0 They were chosen to have an ARISS contact this year (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station). \u00a0An ARISS contact lets students around the world talk directly with the crew of the ISS.\u00a0 \u00a0The preparation and execution of this event is a major undertaking.\u00a0 Currently ARISS contact is scheduled for the week of April 8, 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Clint Thomsen teaches at the Community Learning Center.\u00a0 The Community Learning Center is like a magnet school where students are able to attend for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-youth"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/IMG_2537-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":716,"href":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions\/716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/IMG_2415-300x200.jpg\")
This payload consisted of 4 cameras 2 aimed for the horizon, 1 facing upward, and 1 facing downward.\u00a0 The capsule was made of foamboard and carbon fiber. \u00a0Students make up all of the teams, and each team is given specific responsibilities. The design and construction of the capsule was created by the engineering team. \u00a0A second engineering team designed the sensor board.\u00a0 Several sensors were included with this capsule where students were monitoring data.\u00a0 A programming team created a mobile app, and there was a payload team in charge of the balloon. There were even media teams on Facebook Live and YouTube Live.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/arrlutah.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/IMG_2537-300x200.jpg\")
\u00a0 The balloon burst at 107,000 feet, and was traced using APRS, LoRa, and a satellite beacon.\u00a0 As the balloon was coming down a low altitude gust carried the balloon further west than preferred.\u00a0 The balloon, instead of having a quick landing, had a nice slow soft landing.\u00a0 Clint and his seniors were then off to retrieve their payload.\u00a0 This retrieval was not an easy task.\u00a0 The payload landed in the Cedar Mountains.\u00a0 Clint and his students had a 10-mile round trip hike to retrieve their payload.\u00a0 This was not on groomed trails; they were following the signals from the payload.\u00a0 The final recovery was aided by a MicroFox audio beacon.<\/p>\n