The long-term goals of La ACES are to 1) attract new students to aerospace related science and engineering programs, 2) provide students with a background to develop and manage modern aerospace projects, 3) give students practical experience with sensors, electronics and “spacecraft” systems, 4) assist in retaining these students by exciting their imagination and fostering their innate curiosity, and 5) disseminate this program to institutions across Louisiana.
There are five main phases to La ACES: 1) Development of an informal “Student Ballooning Course”, based upon the ACES pilot material and designed to be disseminated to La ACES participants, 2) Develop and hold a La ACES Leader Training Workshop to familiarize LaSPACE institutions with the ACES program as well as the “Student Ballooning Course” material; 3) Solicit, review and fund a limited number of Student Team Proposals from Louisiana institutions; 4) Design, development, fabrication of students payloads following the ACES model; and 5) Flight operations and final report.
On the "Documents" page of this website you can download a copy of the La ACES proposal submitted to NASA during Fall, 2003 as well as MS PowerPoint presentations on results from the ACES pilot project held at LSU during the 2002-2003 academic year. The "Images" page yields number pictures and videos of the ACES-01 flight, the "Flight Info" page provides technical information on the ACES-01 flight and from the "Groups" page you can find details about the pilot ACES student teams experiment. Finally, from our "Links" page you can get to other websites describing different aspects of scientific ballooning as well as other student ballooning teams across the country.
During the two day workshop participants will be trained in the “Student Ballooning Course” which is intended to provide a core for implementing ACES at an institution. The course material includes lessons and activities in electronics, programming, project management, and balloon payload system development. Further, workshop participants will become familiar with the ACES payload development methodology, the anticipated La ACES schedule, and their responsibility as institution leaders. Finally, the format, content and deadlines for the “Student Team Payload Proposals” will be released and discussed at the workshop.
This is the person who would lead the development, implementation and operation of ACES at an institution as well as provide the single point interface with the La ACES management and flight team at LSU. We would anticipate that the institution leader would be a member of the faculty or technical staff and would be the Principal Investigator for the institution Student Team Payload Proposal.
In general, anyone at your institution or surrounding community who might be interested in supporting your student team. This could include administrators who need to determine if providing internal funding for this program is worthwhile, members of a local HAM radio club who could support your students training in electronics, technical staff that would participate in your local program, other faculty who might be interested in assisting with team mentoring or providing guidance on the investigation of a science topic.
If you respond with your e-mail address to the workshop announcement you will be put on a special e-mail distribution to receive all the latest information about workshop logistics, registration and agenda. In addition, new information about the workshop will be posted on the website here under the "Events" page and will be distributed through the La ACES Yahoo group.
Support will be distributed on the basis of need.
Come to the La ACES Leader Training Workshop.
No! Your institution needs to only put together a student team that will design, build and calibrate a payload. The balloon flight vehicle, flight operations and FAA interface will be taken care of La ACES Management at LSU. See the Ballooning FAQ for more details
Questions about La ACES can be directed to either Dr. John P. Wefel at wefel@phunds.phys.lsu.edu or Dr. T. Gregory Guzik at guzik@phunds.phys.lsu.edu. In addition, you can join the La ACES Yahoo group to post questions and receive the latest La ACES information.