Medford, Ore., — “I’ve never seen a full eclipse of the sun so it is once in a lifetime.”
A total solar eclipse this coming summer has a group of students and mentors at North Medford High School reaching new heights.
“I think we’re at the point now where we’re starting to hand over more and more, so the students drive the whole thing themselves, and we want to sit back and let them do the work as much as possible.” said one mentor, Colin White.
As part of a project with NASA, North Medford is one of five high schools across the country working to capture the eclipse this summer.
“It’s a lot of fun, I mean this is a great experience especially working with all the mentors, they’re really experienced and it’s a great opportunity to learn from them.” said one student, Nick Winetrout.
The students will send a helium balloon into space that will take pictures and videos of the eclipse over Australia – all while live streaming it for the world to see.
“Our roles are to program the payload to accommodate for sensors that detect the strength of light and radiation during the eclipse.” said one student, Alex Hoppe.
All the preparation over the last two years is to make sure the sky isn’t the limit for these students.
“If that doesn’t happen then most of the project is irrelevant to film and live stream. We’ll have to manually point it. Yeah.” said Winetrout and Hoppe.
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