Mariposa County students share amazing video

MARIPOSA COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) -- Several students from Mariposa County are proving even the sky isn't the limit. They recently captured incredible images above the Sierra using a weather balloon. The students launched their weather balloon at Woodland School last month. They had high hopes for their project but were amazed at the how the journey ended.

The cameras captured video of the hillsides of Mariposa, Yosemite's iconic cliffs, beautiful Bass Lake, and the Inyo National Forest by soaring over the Sierra. But it doesn't end there.

"It's just gorgeous to see the clouds and the shadows from the clouds and then the curvature of earth and the blackness of space and the blue line of our atmosphere," Woodland science teacher Danielle Grate said. "It's just mind-blowing to see something like that."

It's more than Grate and her eighth grade students ever imagined when they started planning their science project back in October. First they researched and wrote a business proposal to get funding from a local aerospace company called Taviscorp. Then the building began.

They covered a Styrofoam bucket in aluminum tape for insulation, carefully cut spaces for three GoPro cameras, and equipped it with a tracking device.

"There's hand warmers," student Jared Weinburke said. "Which kept the GoPros and the GPS sensors warm because if they got cold they would shut down and we would lose data."

Then came launch day on June 5th. The balloon quickly rose out of sight, flying through the turbulent jet stream into near space, about 25 miles above the earth. But during the journey, their tracker stopped working for several days. Finally, weeks later, two separate sets of pings confirmed their payload parachuted to ground high above the Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort.

"I was ecstatic," student Callie Nance said. "It was just so great and a great accomplishment because we'd been working so hard on it."

Grate got some help pinpointing the location and hiking ten miles to bring the items back to her class.

"My gosh, it was so crazy to see the video and the curvature of the earth," student Morgan Lewis said. "And we did it, it's crazy!"

The students say they loved the hands on learning experience and working as a team, under the guidance of one proud teacher.

"They stole my heart," Grate said. "I love them, I'll never forget them."

The students say this isn't the end of their experiments. Some are now considering careers in the science and aerospace fields.