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JONESBORO, Ark. (AP) — A total solar eclipse is set to cross the United States on Aug. 21, 2017.
It's an event NASA has already started preparing for — with help from Tillman Kennon, associate chair of Arkansas State University's Department of Chemistry and Physics, the Jonesboro Sun (http://bit.ly/1Qq8SW1 ) reports.
"Think about how rare total solar eclipses are. For example, the last total solar eclipse that went across Arkansas was in 1918. That was the last one," Kennon said. "There was about 10 in the 1900s that crossed somewhere in the United States.
"The last one that actually went through the United States was 1918," he added. "This will be 2017 so that's 99 years. " The thing about this one that really makes it unique is it actually goes all the way across the United States from west to east."
Kennon and his students will join about 39 other college teams in launching high-altitude weather balloons carrying cameras and scientific instruments to record and measure the atmosphere as the eclipse crosses the nation.
The recordings will then be shared live on a NASA website as the total eclipse's path cuts a diagonal path across the United States starting in Oregon and exiting through the South Carolina, Kennon said. Arkansans will only witness a partial eclipse.
"There was no team in Missouri that was ready to do this," said Kennon, the Arkansas BalloonSAT research director. "We were selected as the site team for the eclipse for Missouri, so I looked at the path on Google maps, and I picked Fulton."
When the A-State team has to travel to launch, Kennon said the best place to launch is often at a school, which in this case turned out to be Fulton High School.
"I contacted the superintendent, and he was really excited about it," he said. "They agreed to let us use their campus to launch from. We may — we haven't decided yet — go up there this summer and do a trial run from their campus."
Kennon helped create A-State's weather balloon program in 2006 with students launching the first balloon that December. He said it was designed to complete simple tasks: measure temperature and humidity. A Canon film camera was repurposed to snap pictures every few minutes.
A-State students are now preparing to launch their 43rd helium-filled latex weather balloon later this month. He said they now use GoPro cameras and are more experienced at predicting where their equipment will land once the balloons burst in the upper edge of Earth's atmosphere.
Kennon is also in the process of identifying four undergraduate and two graduate students who will help him during the eclipse, although he expects more students will travel with them.
Each team will receive equipment from NASA to build scientific instruments and then launch the balloons that will reach heights up to 100,000 feet.
The goal is to have the balloons high enough to record the entire eclipse, which will last just over two minutes, Kennon said. It takes an hour to get the balloon up to 90,000 feet — his height goal.
At 84,000 feet, weather balloons fly above 98 percent of the Earth's atmosphere.
To ensure the project goes seamlessly, Kennon said NASA will conduct at least 10 dry runs. He has already participated in four of the dry runs.
The eclipse will last about two minutes and 17 seconds, so there needs to be a lot of coordinating to make it work because each team wants to record as much of the eclipse as they can, he added.
"There are certain types of research that that's one of the few times where you can collect that data from the atmosphere is during that totality when the moon blocks the sun," he added. "That's pretty unique."
Kennon, A-State's representative on the Arkansas State Grant Consortium that will funnel the funds from NASA to A-State, said they want to be as inclusive as possible with the project, which is expected to cost $75,000 total.
He is working to collaborate with an engineering faculty member from the Missouri University of Science and Technology at Rolla, Mo. He said the faculty member and her students are interested in weather balloons, but their program is still new, so they will work with the A-State team during the eclipse.
Other Arkansas faculty and students will also have the opportunity to participate through the consortium.
"We are going to have some money if any of other (Arkansas four-year) schools have faculty and staff who would like to build something that we can fly during the eclipse that is unique," Kennon said. "That is the only time you can collect that kind of data, so we are going to be able to award some small awards for that."
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Information from: The Jonesboro Sun, http://www.jonesborosun.com
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