NSBC Timeline for Educators
Notice of Intent
Due October 4, 2019
STEP 1: Space Grant will email out the NSBC announcement to school districts in September.
STEP 2: Your team will answer a series of questions, listing your research interests, students' ages, and payload ideas. Our graduate students will use this to help you with your teams' proposal submission.
Proposal Submission
Continuous Process. Final submission due Integration Night (late November).
Each team will work on their proposal, working with their team mentor. They will state their research goals, preliminary design, and hypotheses. Proposals will introduce team members and their mission roles. Final edition due by integration night, which the judges will use for their evaluation.
Payload Construction
All of October and November
Students build their payloads, integrating their experiments with the payload container. Students will have routine email and web-call check-ins with the graduate student team mentors. Teams will be in communication with their team mentor throughout this process via email or web-calls.
UND will provide all teams with a pre-made Styrofoam container to house your experiment. This will allow team to focus on the interior science experiment and less on the structural design. Contact the UND team with any questions.
Integration Night*
Friday, November 15, 2019 (backup November 22) starts at 4:00 pm
All teams will meet at UND, where they will present their experiments. This will be the last chance for teams to make final touches and meet with the launch and recovery team. Following workshop time, teams will cycle through stations where they will experiment with the flight prediction software, flight operation systems, and tracking gear. Teams will be prepped and ready for a morning launch.
Launch and Recovery*
Saturday, November 16, 2019 (backup November 23) approx. 9 am launch
The next day after Integration Night, teams will be transported to a nearby launch site, where they will send their payloads off into the stratosphere! Back in the classroom, all students will act as mission control, actively tracking the balloon in real-time. When the college students recover the balloon, NSBC teams will be able to analyze their experiments, taking immediate data observations.
Analysis and Final Report
Early January
Teams have one month to gather any post-flight data or observations necessary for their final report. Space Grant will provide an outline of what information is necessary in this report. Independent UND judges will assess the reports, grading all teams off of the same rubric. A first, second, and third place team will be announced in January.