NASA HASP (High Altitude Student Platform)

NASA High Altitude Student Platform (HASP) provides educational institutions and STEM field students from around the world with the opportunity to design, fabricate, and launch a scientific payload on a NASA scientific balloon. The program, run through Louisiana State University's Space Consortium (LaSPACE), works closely with NASA and many other space focused institutions, is focused on encouraging students to receive real world experience and develop unique works of aerospace engineering. 

The unique challenges of launching equipment on a high altitude balloon pose an engineering design exercise for the student teams and their unique experiment, while offering a stepping stone to more complex projects like RockSatX. Every fall, student teams apply for a spot on NASA HASP, then work through the winter and spring for a summer launch date from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility base in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

Current Project - Sol Seeker Mk 2

For the 2024 launch year, College of the Canyons has chosen to improve upon its prior experiment, Sol Seeker, a sun-tracking telescope whose purpose was to offer a low-cost method to track the sun and capture images of it from a moving platform. Additionally, for the 2024, the Sol Seeker Mk 2 will use sensors to passively record nitrogen levels througout the atmosphere to test the viability of the sensor for future study of the origins of life.

Student Leads

Project Manager: Derek Peraza
Electrical Lead: Derek Peraza
Mechanical Lead: Logan Jambe
Software Lead: Omkar Guha

For more inforamtion about the NASA HASP program at large, visit the NASA HASP Official Webpage