Portland State Magazine Fall 2017

WHILE MILLIONS of spectators watched the skies during the total eclipse, Monday, Aug. 21, a team of PSU engineering students watched the Earth from the edge of space. The team—led by Rihana Mungin, Harmony Ewing and Olea Stevens—were part of a nationwide NASA-funded project to send weather balloons more than 100,000 feet into the sky to photograph the eclipse shadow as it moved across the United States. By comparison, commercial jets cruise at an altitude of about 40,000 feet. The project involved 55 college and high school teams, all of which launched balloons along the eclipse path, which started near Lincoln City and ended in South Carolina. In addition to the NASA project, the PSU team launched other balloons as part of their senior capstone project—one of the final requirements of their baccalaureate degrees. The balloons, equipped with high-resolution digital cameras, hovered at different altitudes, giving a multidimensional view of the event. “This project gave us engineering skills you don’t get in a classroom,” says project leader Rihana Mungin, a mechanical engineering senior. “We produced incredible images that people wouldn’t ordinarily have seen. The PSU team launched from an athletic field at the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis due to its location in the path of totality. The first round of balloons went up at 7 a.m. as spectators started gathering with their lawn chairs outside the field perimeter. Within minutes, they became tiny specks in the cloudless blue sky. More launches followed right up to eclipse time. FALL 2017 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE 13