HAB Team Wins Four Awards in State Competition

This video that captured the highest altitude and the balloon popping won Best Video.

Edgecombe Community College’s High Altitude Balloon Team recently won half of the awards presented at the North Carolina Space Grant High Altitude Balloon Competition.

Nine teams completed the statewide competition. Eight awards were presented during a virtual ceremony held May 11. ECC’s team, known as critECCly stable, won four of the awards:

• Highest Altitude (with an altitude of 88,390 feet beating the next closest team by 79 feet)
• Closest to Predicted Landing Site (with ECC’s payload landing 2243 feet from the predicted site)
• Best Outreach (with multiple outreach events serving more than 220 students)
• Best Video (with a video from the team’s “FauxPro” that caught the highest altitude and balloon popping with the waning crescent moon in the background)

In April, for the fifth time in eight years, members of ECC’s High Altitude Balloon Team won a gold medal in the state SkillsUSA competition in the category Career Pathways Showcase: Industrial and Engineering Technology.

Career Pathways Showcase is a national level competition, and ECC’s gold medalists will compete at the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference in Atlanta in June.

“We are so proud our students were recognized and awarded for their hard work and excellence,” says ECC President Dr. Greg McLeod. “We have no doubt that our High Altitude Balloon Team is the best in the state and has set the bar high for the other teams. We appreciate NC Space Grant for offering this wonderful opportunity and also our faculty advisors for the mentoring and support they provide to our students.”