Project Vision

VAST Vision

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The University of Idaho RISE program will continue to expand and develop as an organization renowned for inspiring a passion for exploration of our universe in the hearts and minds of college students at the University of Idaho. High school students from across the state and country will be able to recognize the scientific and technical significance of what the program has accomplished and want to be a part of the highly successful and rewarding projects. The projects will be focused enough to where their outcomes will be important contributions to science and technology, but broad enough to where students from a variety of disciplines can work together and contribute equally. An important scientific or technical contribution is a project outcome that enables undergraduate students to present research papers or posters at technical conferences across the country and around the world.

By 2009 the balloon program at the University of Idaho will have well established capability to design, build, launch, send/receive telemetry, uplink commands, track, recover, and process/interpret data. The program will have at least two flight ready science payloads and the capability to launch the payloads twice a semester. Each science payload will have an onboard computer and a suite of sensors tailored to investigate a specific scientific area. The payloads will have the ability to store data onboard, and send the data and position for real time tracking and analysis. We will also have the ability to monitor science experiments with live and recoded video and uplink commands from a ground station for real time control of cameras or experiments.

Our ballooning capabilities will be flight proven and reliable by 2010 and some of the more experienced members of the program will have enough training and experience to begin a higher level project. These students will set outcomes, develop a plan and management structure that will enable them to design a small satellite or a sounding rocket experiment to be launched into space.

VAST Objectives (F07/S08)

Fall 07

  1. All project science objectives (for the 2007-2008 school year) and measurement requirements defined and reviewed with an in class science review
  2. Successfully perform a pre-flight readiness review.
  3. Fly and recover at least 1 payload.
  4. Complete construction of the UI ground station command center and satisfy the requirements of the grant that was awarded to VAST by the University of Idaho.
  5. Complete a preliminary design review of the payload design to be flown during the spring 08 semester.
  6. Create a semester report that includes a detailed discussion of current project capabilities, progress during the fall 2007 semester and lessons learned.
  7. Create an online archive for project data and documents.

Spring 08

  1. Successfully perform a critical design review of the design to be flown during the spring 08 semester.
  2. Successfully integrate the high school and senior design payloads in to the UI flight system.
  3. Fly and recover 2 separate flight payloads.
  4. Present payload design and collected flight data/images at the 2008 UI engineering expo
  5. Create an updated semester report that includes a detailed discussion of current project capabilities, progress during the fall 2007 semester and lessons learned.
  6. Create a science paper to be submitted to a technical conference during the summer and/or school year 2008-2009