On Sunday 25 October 2026 the Servet project launched its twelfth sounding balloon from Lumpiaque (Zaragoza, Spain).
The high altitude balloon rose to 33,933 metres with several capsules on board, and the flight went off without incident.
The launch took place at the municipal sports hall in Lumpiaque, chosen after analysing the weather forecasts. Participants, families and neighbours gathered there to watch the capsules being prepared, the balloon inflated and then released towards the stratosphere. At around 12:20 local time the balloon lifted off and climbed for 83 minutes at about 6.5 m/s to its maximum altitude, 33,933 metres. At that height the balloon burst, as usual, and the capsules came down by parachute and landed near Chiprana (Zaragoza), about 103 km in a straight line from the launch site.
Servet XII flew several capsules carrying experiments designed by schools and by the project team. A tracking system made it possible to locate them after landing and recover the equipment to analyse the data they had collected.
Live tracking with LoRa and SSDV
One of the capsules carried a LoRa radio transmitter with GPS that sent its position and altitude every 30 seconds, plus test images using SSDV, a format for sending photos over radio in small packets. Two ground receivers listened to the balloon and posted what they heard to a public Telegram channel, so anyone could follow the flight live from a phone. Telemetry arrived throughout the flight, even with the balloon at 34 km altitude and more than 50 km from the receiver, and three complete images and several nearly complete ones were received.
The flight at a glance
- Launch: sports hall in Lumpiaque (Zaragoza), 25 October 2026.
- Maximum altitude: 33,933 metres.
- Landing: near Chiprana (Zaragoza), a little over two hours after lift-off.
- Distance travelled: about 119 km over the ground.
All the details, photos, the lift-off video, the 3D map and the technical report of the flight are on the Servet XII page.
Cover photo: Alejandro Suarez and Adolfo Amella.
The #SERVET project is a citizen science activity in the stratosphere organised by the I3A (University Research Institute for Engineering in Aragón) of the University of Zaragoza and the Ibercivis Foundation, with funding from the Government of Aragón and the collaboration of Teconecta. We thank the Lumpiaque Town Council for providing the venue and promoting the event.