By the time Mission 3 took place, we were at the end of our school year.  It had been quite a busy and successful year for the Space Program.  With three successful missions under our belts, we were ready to take a well deserved break!  It would be nearly a year until we attempted Mission 4.

 

With some incomplete experiments and goals from Mission 3, due to the grounding of Space Panther Two, the team came up with a list of goals for the next mission, which included a very interesting experiment idea.

 

Mission 4 Goals:

 

• Capture HD video from the peak altitude. 

• Capture 11 Megapixel still images from the flight.

• Reduce camera fogging.

• Send a variety of experiments, including seeds and a solar panel to test the effiiciency of a solar panel at high altitudes.

• Record solar and cosmic radiation data from high altitudes.

• Record internal and external temperature data.

• Recover the craft

 

Two students came up with the idea to attach a solar panel to the outside of the craft to measure the amount of electricity it could generate at higher altitudes.  The seeds experiment that never made it up on Space Panther Two was prepared again for Mission 4, as well as capturing high-resolution photographs for the first time.  And again, we were going to try to reduce the camera fogging problem, which had only gotten worse as the missions went on.

 

On March 2, 2013 we prepared for our Mission 4 launch.  Because of its design, the team decided to reuse the Space Panther One capsule, and with a few modifications it was ready for Mission 4.  The team had decided to set up two cameras, one recording video and the other recording time-lapse still images.  For the first time the cameras were mounted on the outside of the craft rather than on the inside pointing out.  The cameras had been mounted internally on previous missions to keep them warm using heat packs in an effort to keep the batteries from failing in the extremely low temperatures.  We were willing to take the risk this time with an external mount, in hopes that the cameras would survive the cold and produce fog-free images.  One camera would have a sealed casing and the other would be ventilated, exposing it to the elements.  We were hoping that this would solve our camera-fogging issue once and for all.

 

The solar panel was mounted to the top of the craft and attached to a Vernier Lab Pro device that would record voltage produced.  Due to some technical difficulties with our devices, we had to leave our radiation sensor out of this mission, but decided to send our assortment of seeds along anyways.

 

At 7:55 we were ready for launch.  Everything went off without a hitch and as we released the craft, it rose very slowly up into the sky.  We had learned from prior missions what a slow ascent would result in- a farther distance traveled.  The longer the craft would hang in the middle altitudes, the more time the wind would have to push it.  The craft was heavy with experiments and the balloon was slightly underfilled, so as soon as we let it go we realized that we would have a slow traveler.  Would it go as far as the Mission 3 balloon traveled?

 

As we tracked the craft, we saw it take a similar path as in the previous two missions- up and over the mountains to the east, over the Ukiah Valley and continuing above the Mendocino National Forest.  One thing that we immediately noticed was that it began traveling very fast.  Although we did not know the altitude, we could see that it was traveling at groundspeeds of over 60 miles per hour.  It must have been riding in some kind of a jet stream!  As we waited for it to disappear off of our tracking page, we watched as every ten minutes it relayed back its coordinates.  It was crossing over into the Central Valley and was still rising!  It was not until it reached just north of Chico, where the Mission 3 balloon had landed, that it finally sent us its last coordinate- two and a half hours after launch!  

 

We were positive that the balloon was going to be our farthest traveler, and we were certain that it was going to plummet back to Earth in the middle of the Sierra Nevada Mountains- somewhere very difficult or impossible to reach.  We resigned ourselves to the fact that this may be our first lost craft.  We had been very lucky up until this point, and it seemed that maybe our luck had run out!

 

So we waited.  And waited... no coordinates from the craft.  After two hours we realized that it probably wasn't coming back.  So much for Mission 4...

 

Just as we were about to call it a day, we received a signal- two and a half hours after the we received the last signal.  We thought this must be an error because the signal was coming from far over the Sierra Nevada Range and right in the middle of the Nevada Desert!  But sure enough, more signals came in every 10 minutes and the craft was most definitely on its descent into the high desert of Nevada, more than 200 miles from home!  

 

It was truly remarkable and entirely unexpected that our craft would travel so far.  When it finally landed, it had travelled a distance of 251 miles!  We felt fortunate that it had not landed in the mountains, but were equally perplexed at how we were going to go retrieve it from the Nevada desert.  The craft appeared to be two miles off the nearest dirt road, and 15 miles from the nearest paved road.  Although locating it would not be a problem, getting there could prove to be a long drive.

 

Once again, instructors Snyder and Bagnell made plans for what was the biggest recovery effort to date.  Apparently needing off-road access, they loaded up Bagnell's truck with an off-road motorcycle, plenty of survival gear, and headed out the next day for Reno, Nevada.  

 

Upon reaching Reno they laid out their recovery mission.  It appeared as if they would be able to travel the 80 miles from Reno to a dirt road that would take them towards the balloon.  Five to ten miles along the dirt road, they would need to hop onto the dirt bike and head the remaining distance to the balloon, most likely hiking the last two miles. 

 

The next morning they headed out and everything was going as planned.  Easily finding their dirt access road, they traveled for several miles before they came to a point where the two-wheel drive truck could go no futher.  Unloading the bike, they filled their gas tank, donned their gear and headed out for a 10-mile ride into the desert.  

 

Navigating their way through the desert, they were confident that they would make it to their location, retrieve their balloon, and be back in time for a celebratory dinner that evening.  They couldn't wait to send the images and data back to the team in California.

 

That was until they ran out of gas.  Luckily they had stopped when they were a mere two miles from their destination and checked their gas tank.  What would have been enough gas a sea level turned out to not be enough for the motorcycle at the 5,500 feet of altitude.  Due to the altitude and the heavy load, the bike had guzzled through gas like a 1980's Suburban on the streets of San Francisco.  Upon realizing they would not have enough gas to make the return trip, the two decided that rather than recovering the craft and being stuck in the middle of the desert, they would turn around and head back as far as they could go.

 

Which turned out to not be very far until the bike ran completely out of gas.  Ditching the bike alongside the road, the two set out on foot to walk the 8 miles back to the truck.  After plodding through what seemed like an eternal 6 miles of desert road, the two finally ran across a local cattle rancher in a truck- probably the only other soul in a 50 mile radius, who kindly gave them a ride up the final steep 2 miles to the truck.

 

The two drove back to Reno and collapsed.  Should they forget about it?  They seriously discussed leaving the Space Panther One and the dirtbike in the desert to become a part of the landscape.  Waking the next morning with new found energy, the two were determined- they had come all this way and the team had never lost a craft.  They were going to go for it.

 

Renting a four-wheel drive truck (which would have been the right thing to do from the very beginning) they set out down the same path they had taken the day before.  Retracing their steps (literally) they recovered their dirt bike and continued on.  Finally arriving at the point in the road which was perpendicular to the craft, they set out on foot for the next two miles.  To make matters more complicated, they could see that a storm was coming in, so they wasted no time in hiking the two miles through the sparse vegetation and sandy soil of the desert.  It seemed like a walk in the park compared to their adventure the day before.  

 

Triangulating their positions using the GPS devices, they finally spotted the colorful parachute hanging on a scrub brush.  At last, the Space Panther One was found!

 

Upon returning home, after 4 days of traveling, 950 miles of driving, and 9 miles of hiking, the team decided that they were happy with their new 251 miles distance record, and would be quite content not breaking that record again.

 

The results from the mission were mixed.  They had successfully recovered the craft, but the data recording device had lost its battery power and all of the data was erased.  It was a major letdown, as the solar panel experiment did not have any results.  However, they had finally solved their camera fogging issue which resulted in some of the most amazing high-resolution images from any of the missions.  The craft had not taken video or images from peak altitude because the camera batteries ran out of power before reaching peak altitude, due to the slow ascent, but the images they did get were spectacular.  

 

 

Mission 4 Stats

 

Horizontal Distance Traveled: 251 miles WNW

 

Peak Altitude: Unknown

 

Total Flight Time: 5 hours 36 minutes

 

MISSON 4 DATA LOST due to device failure.