Austintown students send weather balloon to Johnstown, Pa.

AUSTINTOWN

Students of Austintown Middle School gathered today to launch a weather balloon, which traveled from the school to a tree in Johnstown, Pa.

That’s more than 100 miles from Austintown to the town east of Pittsburgh. The triangular base under the balloon included a GPS tracking device, two GoPro cameras and an onboard flight computer, as well as a parachute. That computer collected data on air pressure, temperature and humidity, said AMS STEM teacher Jason Freudenberg.

The class will analyze those statistics in coming days.

Ten minutes after the balloon was released, it had traveled about three-quarters of a mile. Teachers and students had downloaded an app onto their phones to track it. Eight students piled into a van with Freudenberg to find and recover the balloon when it landed.

The rest of the class had activities such as predicting where the balloon might land.

Thursday’s launch capped off a nine-week course on “Flight and Space,” which also included building rockets in class.

Read more about their projects in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.