After a year of rigorous engineering, and a months worth of calculated delays, the Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) club of Irvington High School achieved their first successful launch and recovery of their BalloonSat (ESM), which managed to reach the stratosphere. The team worked over the course of twelve months researching and designing the entire satellite, making sure that each component worked properly and was able to withstand the conditions a satellite would go through. 

With every team working on the project being completely confident in their work, from software to hardware, WiSE leadership made the decision to officially launch the satellite. The launch proved successful, with the team being able to fully track the path the BalloonSat took in real time.

According to one of the presidents of WiSE, Diya Dalal (12), the project’s successful first launch was quite bittersweet. “This project was built on the hard work and countless hours of time from our software and structures subsystems, notably the dedicated leads and members who are also seniors, and knowing this was our final launch together made the success even more meaningful.”

As a whole, the entire WiSE program is built off of mentorships between upperclassmen officers and younger club members. Throughout the process of building projects like the BalloonSat, mentors teach their mentees through engineering challenges, ensuring that the knowledge and technical skills needed to maintain the club are passed down. Projects like the BalloonSat were built to prepare the team for future challenges like building future CubeSats and other challenges.

The journey for the team, however, doesn’t just end with the successful recovery of the satellite. The WiSE team, being selected out of a pool of thousands of applicants, will present their findings and data collected from the BalloonSat at the SmallSat Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. While the current leadership of the club begins to prepare to share their experience with industry professionals, the rest of the team has begun the recruitment process for the next batch of applicants in the 2026-27 school year, to prepare them for their upcoming CubeSat project, and continue to bring high level engineering and research to the Irvington High student body.