Monday, September 21, 2015

Aim for the Stars!


Two budding Seattle scientists are making a name for themselves after sending a homemade spacecraft 78,000 feet above the Earth's surface on Saturday.
Sisters Rebecca and Kimberly Yeung are 10 and 8 years old. 
In a video posted to YouTube by their father, Winston Yeung, the girls explain their experiment, which they called the Loki Lego Launcher - after their cat. A cutout photo of Loki hitched a ride on the craft, along with a LEGO figurine of R2-D2. 
Yeung sisters.jpgRebecca and Kimberly Yeung, ages 10 and 8, of Seattle work on their Loki LEGO Launcher, a homemade spacecraft named after their cat. The girls on Saturday sent the launcher 78,000 feet above the Earth's surface. (YouTube)
 
The girls used wood and broken arrow shafts to create the body of the launcher, which they also outfitted with styrofoam padding in case of a water landing. They attached two GoPro cameras to the vehicle to capture Loki and the Star Wars droid's travels.
A weather balloon filled with helium served as the duo's rocket fuel and a flight computer tracked the aircraft. After the journey, which took more than four hours, the girls used GPS to find the downed launcher 50 miles from their launch site. 
By Crystal Bonvillian | cbonvillian@al.com 

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