Permission of Instructor. This course will cover two broad areas: theory and practice of launching payload-carrying weather balloons into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, and research skills necessary to build payloads and communicate with these flights (these skills are very applicable to research in other areas of aerospace as well). The labs will include hands-on experience with circuit design, use of micro-processors, radio and GPS operations, software and hardware development, search and recovery skills - labs will be one evening a week and testing may occur on weekends.