Asgard is a Belgian competition for pupils in high school. However, people from all around the globe participate in this competition: from Spain to Nigeria, and of course, Belgian schools also participate in this competition.

Every group of students can propose an experiment. The chosen teams get a chance to send their experiment with a sounding balloon. A sounding balloon is a balloon that reaches a height of more or less 30 km. It first ascends to this height, then the balloon explodes and the payload descends, with the use of a parachute, back to earth. A flight takes about 3 hours.

For Asgard-X (2020) our main objective is to make a spectrometer. This can tell us which wavelengths of light are most common in the atmosphere. Using this information, we can conclude which elements occur the most in the atmosphere. (More specifically: the troposphere and the stratosphere) We also want to measure the position, height, temperature, air pressure,… And send those data in real time to the ground station using APRS and RTTY.

 

Now there’s another purpose: to see the curvature of our beautiful earth. Here’s an example, made by students, participating in this project in past Asgard competitions.