5 minute read
Solar Eclipse of the Heart
By Erica Levi Zelinger
To study the ozone during an eclipse, a pair of Honors College students had to collect a balloon launched nearly 100 miles away that landed in somebody's backyard near Fredericksburg, Texas. They would have to retrieve it — during hunting season.
Using a GPS tracking device attached to the balloon and some great investigative skills, Kiana Ahmari, chemical engineering ‘27, determined the property was listed on Airbnb, contacted the company, and then got in touch with the owner. With support from the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project, Kiana and Nursultan Zhanabay, chemical engineering ‘27, were among six Drexel students who traveled to Rocksprings, Texas in October for a high-altitude balloon launch when the sun, moon and Earth perfectly aligned to create a path of darkness. This trip — celestial occurrence meets scientific exploration — was months long in the making. Kiana, from Valley Forge, Pa., and Nursultan, or “Nurs,” for short, from Kazakhstan, each applied their first year to participate in the College of Engineering’s Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP). They began working with Dr. Richard Cairncross,
professor of chemical and biological engineering and the project lead on this research.
As part of VIP, Kiana and Nurs attended weekly meetings and followed lesson plans during their winter and spring terms; they both had been accepted to STAR and chose to continue this research full-time with Dr. Cairncross during the summer after their first year.
The Drexel students, joined by one faculty member and a group of students and teachers from Springside Hill Chestnut Academy, set up at Camp Eagle, an adventure camp near San Antonio and in the eclipse path.
The rare astronomic occurrence provided the group with an opportunity to measure stratospheric ozone concentration in response to a rapid change in sunlight; ozone plays a crucial role in protecting life on Earth by absorbing the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. Monitoring the ozone levels in this 8- to 10-minute time period helps scientists understand variations in ozone concentration and distribution, which are essential for assessing the health of the ozone layer.
“The knowledge and data gathered during th[is] expedition will contribute to ongoing research and inspire future endeavors in the field of atmospheric chemistry,” wrote Nurs in
a blog about the experience.
After testing the equipment the day before, and several hours of preparation on the day of, the team launched their first balloon at 9:47 a.m. The string connecting the electronic payloads — GPS, barometric pressure sensor, ozone sensor, cameras — broke off, causing the balloon to fly off without the payloads.
“I felt panic,” Kiana says. “The goal was to launch before the eclipse at 11 a.m. I thought, ‘Are we going to be able to get something up before the eclipse happens?’ But even after the failure, everyone worked together to fill another balloon with helium, discussed cutting back on the payload stacks and devised flight predictions to make sure the balloon hit altitude during the eclipse.”
On a second — and successful — launch, the team was able to get a second balloon up in time, though without the cutdown mechanism that allows the balloon to drop the payload stack; the second balloon then had to fly until it burst. Meanwhile, the group took in the total solar eclipse and its “ring of fire” with requisite eclipse glasses.
At the ground station, Kiana determined the balloon burst at 30,000 meters and then deployed Nurs and the recovery team — which is why, nearly two hours later, the curious and argumentative Nurs was traipsing through a backyard in Fredericksburg, Texas looking for their downed equipment.
Kiana, says Dr. Cairncross, is very good at experiment organization and problem-solving challenges. “Kiana is a is a very dedicated and enthusiastic researcher. She asks lots of questions and is good about planning experiments.”
Nurs, he adds, has an energy an entrepreneurial perspective that could very well help him start a future business enterprise.
“I think STAR helped him build skills of planning, execution and documenting results that will be really useful for his future,” Cairncross says.
Since the October launch, the pair have been prepping for another eclipse in April. This time, the launch path is in Old Forge, New York near the Adirondacks. Just a car trip away, Kiana and Nurs did a practice launch, finishing finals on a Friday afternoon and driving six hours to reach their destination and do a test launch the next morning.
Kiana and Nurs each came to the balloon project with research experience — Kiana worked at Penn Medicine with a medical imaging team, Nurs explored heat engines. But now they are floating in different research directions: Kiana has been doing research in environmental microbiology; Nurs is passionate about polymers and plastics. The pair would still love to parlay their engineering design research into a ballooning club at Drexel like those at other universities.
