Sri Lanka’s Launch to the Stars
On the cold morning after Christmas 2020, the face of the Sri Lankan Space industry was changed forever, when 31 university students successfully launched Sri Lanka’s first-ever High-Altitude Balloon that reached an altitude of more than 30 kilometres. The project; Serendib 1.0 was organised by the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) Sri Lanka, in collaboration with the Arthur C Clarke Institution for Modern Technologies.
The planning and development of the project began many months before the launch date and was headed by Mr Bhanuka Ranaweera, who was the Project Leader for Serendib 1.0. The project was launched as part of a global competition called the Global Space Balloon Challenge, through which more than 671 teams participate around the globe from over 70 countries in multiple continents.
The Serendib 1.0 team compromised of 31 university students, from 18 universities around the country in both private and public educational institutions including the Universities of Peradeniya, Colombo, Moratuwa and NSBM. The students involved in this project were mostly undergraduates and a few graduates. The advisor for the Serendib 1.0 project was Dr Achala Pallegedara, who is a chemical and process engineer and senior lecturer at the University of Peradeniya.
The balloon was launched from the D. S. Senanayake college grounds, in Dambulla at 06.30 am local time. After a successful launch, the ground handling teams began tracking the balloon as it surged through the skies above the Central province of Sri Lanka. The team had installed a radiosonde which enabled GPS navigation and tracking of the balloon. The 401 MHz frequency range was used for the communication of the balloon with the ground teams
The balloon reached a maximum altitude of more than 33,000 meters. This altitude is magnanimous in nature when compared to the altitude of aircraft; A regular passenger aircraft flies at an altitude of 13700 meters, which is less than half of what the Serendib balloon achieved. The balloon reached an altitude similar to the highest ever skydive by Felix Baumgartner in 2012 at 101,000 feet.
After having reached its maximum altitude, the balloon completed the ‘burst’ phase and then proceeded to deploy its parachute. The parachute ensured a gradual descent of the balloon, where it was located in the middle of a paddy field, close to Maho in the North Western Province of the country. The balloon has travelled around 45 kilometres within its 3-hour flight duration.
The payload that was attached to the balloon held a plethora of equipment of scientific significance, which was used for high altitude atmospheric testing, communications establishment etc. The information that was gained from the project in terms of experimentation and scientific intelligence will be sent to the international judging committee for the competition.
As this was a day of history in the making, the event was broadcasted on multiple television channels and shows including Hiru News, Siyatha News, Derana and Swarnavahini. The event also had its own press conference, where senior members of the Serendib 1.0 project team explained the dimensions of the project, in order to instigate awareness and interest of space-based projects to the Sri Lankan populations. Website links to the broadcast of the event have been enclosed at the end of this article.
The vision of SEDS Sri Lanka is ‘Bringing together students of many disciplines from all corners of the country to celebrate student shared passion for all things about space”. The Serendib 1.0 project and launch were directly in line with the organisation’s vision to integrate students from all around the country to work on major projects.
While Serendib 1.0 was one of the largest astronomy-related events in Sri Lanka, this is just the beginning for SEDS Sri Lanka, as plans have already been made to launch multiple high-altitude balloons of this nature to ultimately attempt to launch a CubeSat through a rocket from a high-altitude balloon at several thousand meters above sea level.
Having represented Sri Lanka in this major space competition and had a successful operational framework, SEDS Sri Lanka and the Serendib 1.0 team put Sri Lanka into the international spotlight in terms of student-based astronomy events, where international collaborations are being made now, for larger projects of a much more complex nature.
As the CEO of the Zero Gravity Corporation quoted; ‘Space is an inspirational concept that allows you to dream big’. SEDS Sri Lanka and the Serendib 1.0 project team believes in this with great faith and sees Serendib 1.0 as the first step to a world of endless possibilities for astronomical projects, both in Sri Lanka and on the global arena.
Links
Swarnawahini
Hiru News
Derana
Siyatha News
LankaANews
DaraniSL
Colombo Times (Newspaper)
Sunday Times (Newspaper)
