UH Manoa - BalloonSat Program

The UH Manoa BalloonSat Program enables students to design, build and launch miniature satellites tethered to a weather balloon equipped with cameras and instrumentation for measuring atmospheric weather conditions at altitudes of up to 100,000 feet - three times the cruising altitude of jet airplanes. High school interns and UHM engineering undergraduates have launched BalloonSat missions in Colorado since 2002. In 2008, a new hallmark was achieved with the successful launch of the first BalloonSat mission in Hawaii, streaming wireless video from a stellite to a mobile ground station. This leading edge program was developed by College of Engineering alumni Jason Akagi and Byron Wolfe of the Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory with support of Dr. Wayne Shiroma and graduate student Justin Akagi.