The student summer job project Starburst reached its climax on Wednesday August 2nd with the launch of the stratospheric balloon from Andøya Space Center to a height of 31,7 km. All systems were functioning, providing live video and data feed to the excited Starburst team.
With the help of summer student Mats Hagby Høydal, the tracking antenna command signals were sent by fiber from the control room to the antenna outside, following the balloon in real-time for downstream data of an encrypted signal. This signal was then decrypted and used to evaluate the quality of the datalink.