The High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) Team at St. Catherine University is an all-women’s research team devoted to exploring the stratosphere through a multitude of experiments. This research has been conducted at St. Catherine University since 2009 and the collaborative undergraduate research is presented at conferences throughout the year. These experiments are conducted through weather balloon flights which are conducted around the state of Minnesota. Attached to the weather balloons are payloads boxes, that contain the instrumentation used to take the measurements and collect the data. The payloads are able to communicate with the team on the ground through the use of GPS trackers in order for the team to follow and retrieve the payload upon landing. The instrumentation used includes temperature sensors, pressure sensors, Personal Neutron Dosimeters, and Geiger-Müller tubes. We are also currently investigating the Regener- Pfotzer maximum (a region of higher cosmic ray flux) on Tardigrades. These payloads are designed with certain projects in mind to develop the research and are built from scratch by the team. The payloads are flown for multiple flights to get the most data possible for each experiment.
