Celebrate Science With A Weather Balloon Launch At Cheyenne Children’s Museum

The Cheyenne Children's Museum will be launching a weather balloon as part of it's ''Race for Space" event on April 25 at 9. a.m.

The museum bills the event as 'an unforgettable day of rocket launches, robotics and hands-on STEM exploration."

You can hear an interview about the event from this past weekend's ''Weekend in Wyoming" program on the audio file attached to this interview [below].

The museum with be holding the event with the help of Edge Flyte, a local startup company in Cheyenne.

Get our free mobile app

Tate Shrock of Edge Flyte says at the event, the company will be "launching a brand new weather balloon to the edge of space.....primarily what my company does is we send stuff up all across the world from things like satellite technology all the way to weather balloons."

The Plan Is To Recover The Balloon A Couple Of Hours After Launch

Shrock says the goal will be to recover the balloon after about two hours. By that time it will have likely crossed into Colorado or Nebraska, depending on the prevailing winds that day. The balloon will be carrying student-built payloads, which is why they hope to recover the balloon. Carson Black of the Children's Museum says the payload will include small rockets and similar items made by kids,

The balloon will also carry GPS and other technology to allow for tracking.

He calls the ''Race For Space' event a "great event to get involved with the community and great event to get involved with the students." Schrock goes on to say "this is almost like an event launch."

Schrock says he personally never went to college, but he says the kind of technology that will be demonstrated at the ''Race for Space" motivated him to become self taught in science and technology. He hopes the even will spark a love for STEM subjects that will encourage the next generation to acquire such learning.

Carson Black says the ''Race for Space'' event came about because the museum had a rocket launcher on loan from the Science Zone Museum in Casper. ''It was a huge hit and people were sad when it left" she says. ''We had a really wonderful donor say 'Well, I'll pitch in. I'll foot the bill so that we can have a permanent rocket launcher here at Cheyenne Children's Museum...it's back. It's live. It's on the floor. You can come enjoy it."

She identifies the donors as the Oberg family. The April 25 event will feature a formal exhibit dedication to the Obergs followed by the rest of the ''Race for Space."

Hear ''Race For Space" Interview Here