Project HALON: Engaging secondary students in high-altitude ballooning experiments

The United States is not recruiting, retaining, and graduating enough undergraduates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors to meet the needs of employers across the nation. Another challenge comes from a university-level shortfall in preparing and supporting enough secondary school educators in the STEM fields. Project HALON (High Altitude Learning Over Nebraska) seeks to reverse this trend through a unique, interdisciplinary experiential learning opportunity that focuses on the design, development, integration, and testing of space hardware and software using high altitude ballooning (HAB) platforms for technology demonstrations and scientific experiments. While participating in Project HALON, teams of middle school and high school researchers progress through a modified version of NASA's systems engineering process to develop a near-space research experiment. Undergraduate mentors guide the teams through a series of reviews to propose an experiment to collect data and ensure that the design performs properly during ground testing. Through Project HALON, students cultivate authentic research skills, expand their knowledge of near-space science, and gain confidence to meet the challenges of more advanced STEM-related courses and learning opportunities. In addition, undergraduate STEM students and pre-service and in-service secondary school STEM educators participating in Project HALON gain expertise in mentoring and team-based problem solving that helps prepare them for more advanced space technology research.