Thanks to social media and some international cooperation, a University of Arizona researcher has his science project back after it crash landed in a remote part of Sonora, Mexico.
Aerospace engineering student Tristan Schuler is studying whether solar-powered balloons can be used for aerial research in such “hard-to-reach places” as Mars or Venus.
But his Oct. 15 test flight from Lake Havasu City did not go according to plan.
Schuler said he expected his homemade prototype to rise to no more than about 60,000 feet and eventually come down “pretty close to I-10” somewhere between Phoenix and Tucson.
Instead, it soared to more than 67,000 feet, where unexpected wind gusts of about 70 mph carried it 180 miles due south.
When it finally crashed down more than nine hours later, its GPS tracking signal placed it in an isolated patch of the El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve, about 30 miles south of the border.
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“I thought it was for sure gone,” Schuler said.
A small reward and a savior
Just in case, Schuler posted about it on regional sections of Reddit and Facebook, in hopes of finding someone in Mexico willing to go collect it for him.
He also tried contacting the visitor center for the biosphere reserve, but no one responded to his messages, possibly because he used Google’s translator to try to explain what he had lost and where he had lost it.
Schuler even offered a $100 reward, which he said was all he could afford as a “poor college student” with a research grant that doesn’t cover expenses like that.
Then along came Sonoran businessman Aron Brown.
The Rocky Point resident said he read about the missing balloon on Facebook and thought it might be fun to retrieve it, so he contacted Schuler to get its last known location: somewhere in an ocean of sand dunes about 150 miles north of his house.
Then, on Oct. 18, Brown loaded his four-wheeler into the back of his truck and headed that way with his family.
Balloon hunting in the dunes
The road only got him to within about 12 miles of the coordinates, so he parked the truck, grabbed a small bottle of water and headed into the dunes alone on the ATV with only a hand-held GPS unit to guide him.
His family stayed behind to wait for him. “I told them, ‘if I don’t come back in a couple of hours, report me missing,’ ” Brown said.
It took Brown about 90 minutes to reach the location Schuler had given him, but there was no wreckage in sight. Brown said he prayed a little and climbed to the top of a nearby dune, where he spotted some material moving around in the breeze about 300 yards away.
The only signs of activity around the downed balloon were the tracks left by coyotes and other small animals, Brown said.
He shot a few pictures and a quick video, then gathered up the balloon’s transmitter and gondola — basically a 1-foot-square foam box containing sensors, electronics and a GoPro camera.
He said he also tried to collect the balloon itself, but the delicate plastic material was wrapped around a bush and partially buried.
“I was in a hurry to get home. I didn’t like (being) where I was by myself,” Brown said. “On a side note: I’ll never do that again. You could easily get lost if you don’t have a GPS, and if you break down you might never get out of there.”
Some science and some luck
Later that day, Brown posted a message on an online bulletin board for Rocky Point’s Cholla Bay and soon connected with a friend who was headed to Tucson early the next morning and was willing to take the box back with him.
Within about 48 hours of Schuler’s initial internet plea, the researcher had his missing science project back.
“We didn’t even have to ship anything,” Schuler said.
This was the second test flight of his prototype, which is about 20 feet in diameter and rises on plain old air heated by the sun.
“We’re in the super early stages,” he said.
The first flight went much more smoothly.
On Oct. 1, he launched a similar balloon from the town of Globe. Then he watched its GPS track in amazement as it flew south to Tucson and got snared by some power lines about a half mile from the UA campus.
“It was wild. It came down like five minutes from my house,” Schuler said.
Researcher grateful to have his gear back
His cross-border mishap the second time around drew plenty of jokes online about the balloon really being part of some sophisticated smuggling operation.
But Schuler insists there’s “nothing sketchy” about his research, unless there’s a law he’s not aware of against collecting atmospheric temperatures.
Schuler was curious to know if he had violated some international treaty with his accidental incursion into Mexican airspace. “I did some Googling about that but didn’t find anything,” he said.
Getting the box back will allow him to verify sensor data from the test flight and spare him the expense of replacing the computer gear, the transmitter and the camera.
Schuler didn’t want to give an exact figure, but he said the stuff he got back is worth “significantly more than the $100 reward I was offering.”
He said Brown deserves “a big thank you” for retrieving his prototype.
“I was definitely not expecting to get it back,” Schuler said. “Aron really saved the day on this one.”
For his part, Brown said Schuler offered him the reward money, but he turned it down. After six months cooped up by the coronavirus, he said an adventure “out there into the boonies” was a welcome change of pace.
“It was actually just for fun,” Brown said. “I should be paying him for a fun Sunday with my family.”
Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@tucson.com or 520-573 4283. On Twitter: @RefriedBrean