Details and rules below. Note - continuing in 2020, the only official prize will be a letter of recognition from the GSBC team
- Best Education Outreach Initiative
- Best Design
Overview
To reward teams participating in the GSBC, we will recognize teams that go beyond traditional high altitude ballooning and do something unique and cool. Each challenge requires a specific set of information to be submitted. Submissions for each of the categories will open until one week after the GSBC window closes.
Any teams that violate the following rules for participation will be immediately disqualified:
You must be part of a team with at least one other member. This is to ensure everyone’s safety as they assemble and fly their balloons.
Your payload must contain a camera. We know this adds weight to your balloon, but we believe sharing photos is the best way to inspire and connect with other teams, a critical component of the GSBC.
Your payload must carry a GPS. This will allow you to track and recover your payload safely.
You must follow all your local regulations. Please see the regulations page for more information.
You must fly within the GSBC window and submit results within a week after the window closes. If weather becomes a concern, contact us and we may be able to make an exception.
Everyone on a team must have signed up on the website and accepted the Terms and Conditions.
If writing a report in English for any of these challenges is extremely prohibitive, please contact us directly and we may be able to work out another form of submission. During judging, the home country of teams will be taken into account when judging clarity of the reports - professionalism is still expected.
Specific Challenges
Best Education Outreach Initiative
High Altitude Balloons can augment learning in many different ways. For some students, the process of building a HAB is a chance to learn new skills such as programming, 3D modelling, or electronics fabrication. For other students, the launch is an opportunity to run valuable experiments in the upper atmosphere to test hypotheses made in the classroom. The possibilities for incorporating HABs into an education program are endless. To encourage educators and teachers (and even teams) to use the GSBC to support their own educational initiatives, we will award a prize for the most creative and effective use of HABs to supplement existing education programs and curricula, or to create new ones entirely.
Requirements for Eligibility:
- All teams that wish to compete for the best educational initiative must fulfill the GSBC’s “Rules for Participation” - above
- The initiative must be associated with at least one HAB launch made during the designated GSBC launch window, however the education initiative/program that the launch is part of can extend outside this window.
- Applicants must submit a report [5 pages max] in English describing how they used HABs to further their education outcomes. Reports should include at minimum these sections: Introduction, description
of the education program they are involved in (and how long it has existed), how HABs flown during the GSBC were used to support this program, how many students were involved, how effectiveness was measured (we encourage you to be creative here!), cost summaries, and (optional) a short description/plan on how HABs will be used in the future for your program
Judging Criteria: All judging will be done based on the Best Education Outreach Initiative Rubric.
Best Design
This is the challenge for the most creative HAB mission. This category will take everything into account from launch location to data collected to size and construction of the payload and balloon to creativity in the approach and anything else that you can think of. We are purposefully leaving this vague so you can let your imagination run wild!
Requirements for eligibility:
- All teams that wish to compete for the best design challenge must fulfill the GSBC’s “Rules for Participation” - above
- Teams must write a report [5 pages max] in English telling us about what you did and why you should win!
In an appendix to your report, feel free to include any other information to show that this was indeed your flight and was launched during the GSBC timeframe, such as organized GPS strings, your APRS call sign, pictures of the set up, pictures from the launch day, or pictures from the flight.
Judging Criteria: All judging will be done based on the Best Design Rubric.
