The first donkey in outer space

On June 10th, 2017, within the framework of the university project “Space Donkey – Usiołek w kosmosie”, students of Silesian lower secondary schools and technical secondary schools together with researchers from unibot and the teenagers’ university of Silesia released a stratospheric balloon with a suspended research probe and a mascot of the University of Silesia – Usiołek. The students had worked on the project for a few weeks and learnt the basics of programming and electronics in order to construct an amateur research probe, gather some data concerning the atmosphere, the flight of the balloon and… teach Usiołek to fly.

Usiołek rose to the height of nearly 30 km and was not too cold. the temperature was favourable, with the lowest value of -13ºC.