Colorado Space Grant Consortium Pikes Peak Community College Accomplishments:

Leading Up To This Past Year’s Effort We created an education experience for a selected group of students on ionizing radiation – We created a presentation on ionizing radiation in the natural environment – We utilized a series of experiments to demonstrate radiation characteristics and effects

PTerP Proxima Terra Project PPCC’s first BalloonSat project Student led Student driven Student executed Faculty advised Brittney Eck, Brandon Driver, Geriann Henderson, David Malinaric, Austin Wasinger Advisors: Bud Murch, Bob Day

Major Experiments: Meteorological Data – Temperature inside payload and outside – Relative humidity – Pressure Radiation Environment – Ionizing radiation with Geiger counters – Ionizing radiation with nuclear emulsions – UVA and UVB

Major Experiments: Imaging – Automated digital camera Biological sensors (Bacillus & E Coli) – Investigate the growth rate dependence of near space exposure – Investigate the effect of near space exposure on mutations

Results Approximately two thirds of the experiments returned useable data. Meteorological results were excellent – For example the pressure data

Results Radiation measurements also were excellent showing the expected altitude effect. The nuclear emulsion results showed evidence of high energy particle events but require further data analysis.

Results The biological results were partially successful The camera did not return data. The most important results was the excitement and reward of designing, building, fielding, and reducing the data from a complex, single shot experiment.