VGT-2 Heads Out on Lap 7!

     While VGT2 has enjoyed smooth sailing at around 43,000 feet for the nearly 150,000 miles it has traveled, thanks to the lane of wind currents it has found for its mid-latitude journey, the route, nevertheless, must be fraught with significant challenges. VGT-2 began its journey flying nearly side-by-side with sibling VGT-1, which has been missing in action since crossing over Chesapeake Bay for the fourth time as evening fell on February 26.
     VGT-2 has held pretty much to a course that has taken it six times over Portugal, Italy, Turkey, the Middle East, southern China, the south island of Japan, Hawaii (thankfully, to relieve the radio silence in the flight over the vast emptiness of the Pacific), southern California, Nevada, Louisiana and Florida. One anomalous lap did send it whipping north from Hawaii to British Columbia and then abruptly shooting it south over Area 51 in Nevada, before re-entering the track across the southern states.

     In celebration of the recent Spring Equinox, several dozen schools around the world launched their own similar balloon projects, some of which are currently completing their first lap. Others, heading out from some extreme southerly (Australia) or northerly (Canada) locations, have struggled to escape the fierce wind patterns surrounding their launch sites, doing loop de loops over New Zealand or Greenland. The continuing success of VGT-2’s trip has set the Prep project apart,, as Snyder expressed it, “putting the Prep students in rarefied air.”