Austintown Middle School STEM students are literally taking their learning to new heights as they launched a latex weather balloon.

The students gathered under grey skies at Coppola Baseball Field Thursday morning to release a balloon filled with 80 cubic feet of helium into the clouds.

Attached to the balloon was a payload that included a GPS tracking device, two GoPro cameras, as well as an onboard flight computer.

The computer will use sensors to collect data such as temperature, pressure, and humidity.

Possibly reaching heights of up to 115,000 feet, as the atmospheric pressure decreases the balloon expands and explodes.

A small parachute carries the equipment back to earth where it is tracked and retrieved by students who take it back to the classroom to be analyzed.

The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program at Austintown Middle School offers 7th and 8th-grade students a project-based and student-centered learning environment with a focus on 21st-century skills.