On May 3, the nEXO group at Skyline College participated in an exciting near-space experiment, launching cosmic ray detectors they had built aboard two high-altitude weather balloons that soared into the stratosphere. These balloon-borne detectors collected data during the flight, rising to approximately 100,000 feet above the ground. The purpose of this experiment is to investigate interactions between cosmic rays and the Earth’s atmosphere.
This initiative is part of a larger international collaboration, the HERA (High-altitude Engineering for Research in Astrophysics) project, led by Professor Christy Love at Drexel University, Dr. Alissa Sperling, Physics faculty at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, and Jackie Bondell, Senior Education and Outreach Manager for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics at the University of Melbourne. Teams from institutions across the U.S. launched similar balloons on the same day from four locations: California, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas. By coordinating launches across different geographic regions, it is possible to compare cosmic ray data nationwide, contributing to our understanding of high-energy particles from space and fostering a spirit of scientific partnership and exploration.
Each participating team consists of a university or college and a high school. The team from California includes the Bay School of San Francisco, which provided the weather balloon expertise and logistics, and Skyline College, which contributed the cosmic detectors built by the nEXO students.
As part of this exciting expedition were nEXO student Yuting Duan, Dr. Emilie Hein, Dr. Susanne Schubert, Dr. Polin Yadak, and Professor Marco Wehrfritz. They joined student Henry Weldon and teachers Craig Butz, David Friedlander-Holm, and Kyle Persau from the Bay School, as well as Jackie Bondell, who was visiting from Australia. nEXO students Codie Lai, Tin Htoo, and Thant Zayar (Eddy) Htut had also planned to join, but they had a schedule conflict with the transfer welcome all-day event at UC Berkeley. They, however, contributed greatly to the launch with their work on the cosmic detectors, along with nEXO students Dasha Baitazarova, Aryanna Mendoza, Eslin Villalta, and Valeria Zarco.
The day started early, with a departure from Skyline College at 5:30 am. Everyone met at the launch site in Gilroy a short time later. The balloons took off around 10:15 am and were successfully retrieved around 4:00 pm north of Modesto.
We are excited about the next phases of the project. During the Summer Introduction to Research and Experimentation in Nuclear Physics (SIREN), 24 students will analyze the data from the detectors and work on ways to improve data collection for the next synchronized launch planned for Fall 2025. We are hoping some of the findings will be shared at the next International Cosmic Day in November 2025 and conferences throughout the 2025-2026 academic year.
This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science (Office of Nuclear Physics), under Award Number DE-SC0024677.
Article by: Emilie Hein, Susanne Schubert, Marco Wehrfritz, and Polin Yadak
