SCH in the Stratosphere

Over the past year, the Devil Dragon Balloon team—a collaboration between Drexel University and SCH—has been preparing its High-Altitude Student Platform (HASP) experiment. And on September 2, it was officially in the stratosphere, live on NASA's launch site!

The NASA Balloon Program Office initiative provides a unique opportunity to launch student-designed payloads into the upper atmosphere aboard a massive zero-pressure balloon. The team's experiment will capture and analyze real-time data on secondary cosmic-ray production high above Earth's denser atmosphere.

Jude Hackford ’27 and Ariana Chan van der Helm ’27, who led the project, alongside Dr. Sperling, joined Drexel undergraduate and graduate students to prepare the balloon for flight this summer. Leo Cohen ’26 and Claire Lynch ’27 also joined them to help with the launch. This main flight follows successful test launches earlier this year in Texas and Virginia.

“We’re very fortunate to have been accepted to fly on a NASA-sponsored balloon mission,” said Sperling. “This flight comes after a full year of hard work from SCH and Drexel students and faculty who worked collaboratively from the early conceptual phases of the experiment to the fabrication and testing of the payload itself. We are excited to see the data that comes back from this flight!”

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