From HABTWiki

Welcome to the home page of the Wright State University (WSU) High Altitude Balloon (HIBAL) Team. The WSU HIBAL team operates out of the Near Space Experiments lab in the Russ Engineering Center and is dedicated to the exploration of near space for scientific and educational purposes.

WSU started projects for near-space exploration with the Temperature Satellite project in 2003 for Freshman Engineering students. This was initiated by advisors Kumar Yelamarthi and Ruby Mawasha with funding obtained from the Ohio Space Grant Consortium. In two years, over 500 Freshman Engineering students participated in this project and gave outstanding feedback for the same. Also, in 2004, Kumar Yelamarthi and some of the Freshman students presented this project at a NASA meeting, and received outstanding feedback.

With this encouragement from NASA, and the feedback from the students, WSU decided to move forward in the areas of near-space exploration. The result, HIBAL team was formed in 2005.

The HIBAL team was initiated in 2005 by advisors Joseph C. Slater and J. Mitch Wolff and Ruby Mawasha with funding obtained from the Ohio Space Grant Consortium. Members of the team include current and former WSU engineering students, but other members of the community are welcome to join. A major goal of the team is to launch two senior design experiments each year with growing sophistication and techonology demonstration each time. The team has contributed significant experience to electronics hardening, tracking reliability, and flight prediction and is currently preparing to launch an in-situ video system.

Please enjoy prerusing our pages, including spectacular photos, flight video, and some of our more humorous moments.