On eclipse day, hundreds of students will send up balloons for science
The NASA-backed Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project puts students in charge of a bold scientific endeavor to study the April 8 total solar eclipse.
CUMBERLAND, Md. — It's a chilly March morning, and Mary Bowden is standing in the parking lot of a local community college.
Bowden is a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland. Nearby, her students are hustling around on a bright blue tarp, rolling out heavy cylinders of compressed gas and fiddling with boxes of electronics.
"This is our final, final dress rehearsal," Bowden says as she surveys the scene.
At the start of next month, a total solar eclipse will sweep across the continental United States. It will begin in Texas and move north through a dozen states before exiting the country through Maine and into
