“The Journey into Space” – this was the motto of our project seminar. The ambitious goal was to develop and build a measuring probe from scratch in order to then launch it by means of a weather balloon 30 km high into the stratosphere for the purpose of collecting and analyzing various data.

To carry out this project, we divided our 12-member team into several smaller groups, each of which took on a specific task.

Our two electrical teams were responsible for the development and programming of two redundantly operating measurement systems. One system was designed to transmit the collected data in real time to our project website.

We used simulations and various tests to prepare the probe for the extreme conditions prevailing at an altitude of 30 km, so that hopefully nothing would go wrong.

After 18 months of work on the project, we were able to launch the stratosphere probe into space. Neither the changeable weather nor the COVID-19 pandemic was able to thwart our stratospheric mission.

The recovery of the probe proved to be more complicated, however. This was due to an unexpectedly strong jet stream influence that caused our balloon to land as far away as Austria. Due to the COVID-19 measures in place, we had to abort tracking the probe in Burghausen at the border to Austria. However, the position of our balloon, reliably transmitted by our two GPS systems during the flight and also after landing, fortunately allowed us to contact a family whose farm was close to the landing site. The Hager family was kind enough to recover the balloon and send us the probe. And so, we were able to evaluate even the data that was not transmitted during the flight and thus bring the project to a successful close.

Klaus Muthsam, Welfen-Gymnasium