Waroona’s stratospheric rise as Curtin University launches high altitude balloon to the edge of space

3. . . 2. . . 1. . . Lift off.

Waroona entered the space race on Friday as researchers from Curtin University’s Binar Space Program launched the third of its high altitude balloons over the town, climbing 30km into the stratosphere.

The team — made up mostly of students from Curtin’s Space Science Technology Centre — gathered at the oval behind the Waroona Recreation Centre at 7am to prepare the launch.

The balloon carried a payload called PyroMantis, named after fire, and the five cameras onboard.

Climbing up for more than two hours the PyroMantis captured data about the jarrah forest below, using its cameras to gather information about the dryness of the vegetation, providing data to predict fuel conditions and support bushfire mitigation strategies.

Curtin University’s planetary and space scientist Eriita Jones was one of the leaders of the project, and was eager to see the balloon take off.

She said the Waroona townsite was the perfect location for their studies, sitting within a nest of jarrah and marri trees and close to their monitoring site in Dwellingup State forest.

“The reason we’re doing it here is because we want to capture imagery over the beautiful forests around here, and get some information for fuel load moisture monitoring,” she said.

“We are working on products to look at how fuel loads change and dry out over time, because that’s a really a crucial input for understanding bushfire severity, flammability and predicting how fire will spread and where things may ignite.

“Part of these products is this unique payload that we’ve build at the Binar Space Program.”

Along with the cameras, PyroMantis is equipped with a GPS and radio transmitter, and a separate horizontal camera to capture the horizon as the balloon rises.

“We’re aiming to get that gorgeous shot of the curvature of the earth,” Dr Jones said.

With the balloon reaching explosive heights, the payload would fall somewhere over the forests, with the Binar team working with the Department of Biodiversity, Conversations and Attractions to locate and retrieve it.

Dr Jones said the retrieval was a particularity daunting task, though she was looking forward to getting the PyroMantis back and diving into the data gathered.

“The end goal is to provide something useful that is going to be useful for the people managing bushfire risk on the ground,” she said.

Dr Jones said it was a nice coincidence the launch occurred on the International Day of Forests.