From Moscow to Iceland, students launch weather balloons for NASA research

Something weird was in the Moscow sky a lot this summer. Neither bird nor plane nor UFO, these were weather balloons used to help NASA better understand atmospheric processes that influence weather, climate and air quality.

As members of the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP), University of Idaho College of Engineering chemical engineering professor Matthew Bernards and his student team conducted balloon launches on Theophilus Tower lawn on the Moscow campus during Summer 2026. Their practice culminated in 53 balloon launches that took place in Iceland during a total solar eclipse over the course of 43 hours.

The NEBP research focuses on the planetary boundary layer (PBL), the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Since the PBL is the closest layer to the surface of the planet, it directly affects weather. The NEBP weather balloons carry instrumentation that measures different variables in the PBL such as humidity, temperature and pressure.

“The reason we’re focused on the eclipse is because of the rapid onset of night,” Bernards said. “We’re able to measure what happens when PBL conditions change rapidly; the data from NEBP will help us predict weather patterns more accurately.”

Participating in NEBP is open to all Idaho students.  Mechanical engineering students Travis Christopher, Erin Griffith, Jarod Honberger, Jack Marshall and Kieran Schwegel, and Brigham Young University-Idaho physics student Katrina Billeter are all part of the team.

“I was motivated to join the team because the project places my interests in weather ballooning in a more professional setting working with NASA,” said Honberger. “The opportunity to utilize my skills in such a different environment was so interesting to me!”

In Iceland, the team explored downtown Reykjavik and Thingvellir National Park, and they hiked through the country’s backroads, stumbling across waterfalls and thermal rivers.

During the eclipse launches, students split into teams to sleep in shifts, joining forces with students from University of Kentucky.

“Launching that many balloons was surprisingly manageable, just because of all the practice we’ve had,” Honberger said. “I was able to go through the motions.”

Beyond the sheer volume of balloons, the team contended with Icelandic rain and GPS complications during a critical juncture, right when the eclipse started.

“It was very wet during a lot of the launches, but the real issue we encountered was with our GPS signal,” Griffith said. “Right at first contact with the eclipse, our GPS signals dropped. By turning off some equipment that wasn’t actively being used, we were thankfully able to clear up some bandwidth, but it was very scary for a bit.”

Following the end of the trip, Griffith will be working on cleaning up the data, preparing it for analysis.