History

From the very beginnings of the space activity in France, the experiments onboard stratospheric balloons were a key element in the research efforts of the country. Initially were performed some isolated balloon launches from Trappes a site near Paris, in the north part of France. These were followed by a first launch campaign coordinated with the Soviet Union from the Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean, near Antarctica carried out in 1962.

The success of the Kerguelen campaign installed in the French scientific community the idea of start a much organized balloon launch program in France mainland, but soon was realized how difficult would be to integrate the balloons in the aeronautic domain. Initial test were performed using the military facilities of the CEAM (Centre d'Expériences Aériennes Militaires) at Mont-De-Marsan air base, in the Aquitanie region in the south of the country, but the longer times of preparation needed for balloon operations (por example to wait a decrease in the wind speed) blocked the air traffic, turning impossible the coexistence of the two activities. Nevertheless, a solution was offered: to transfer the operations to the airfield of a town called Aire-sur-l'Adour located in the department of Landes, in the southwest part of the country, just in the border of the military operational zone. The new place had two main advantages, it was a very stable meteorological area whith very smooth airflows around the 25000 meters and was close to the aeronautical facilities of Potez a key factor to the growing of the Center in the future.

After negotiations with the Air Traffic Control at Bordeaux-Mérignac the decision of the establishment of the Centre de Lancement de Ballons Aire-sur-l'Adour (CLBA) as will be known was taken. Initially, the site was under administration of the Service d'Aéronomie and until the completion of the basic infrastructure, CEAM provided a small building to be used as operational control center to receive the balloon's telemetry and for general management of the program. In those pioneering first steps, even the aircraft used to pursuit the balloons and to search for the landed payloads was rented in a flight-by-flight basis.

Although some test flights were made during 1963, the formal inauguration of the center took place in September 12th, 1964 after the completion of the first Operational Building (today dismantled). On that date a special ceremony was held with the presence of senior officials from the French Government and CNES, who toured the facilities and witnessed the launch of a balloon.

Following the inauguration was created the Balloon Study Section, which later will become the Studies and Evaluations Department of CNES's Balloon Division at Toulouse Space Center in 1969. His fundamental goal was to develope manufacturing techniques and test the superpressure balloons build for the Eole project. This task was carried out with the partnership of Zodiac. Later in 1970, this lead to the formation of a dedicated subsidiary: Zodiac Space which actually build all the balloons used by the French space agency program.

In the 80's decade a major improvement to the balloon base was done, allowing the progressive consolidation of the facility, which became an important motor of the local economy, since the city benefits from the great amount of foreign scientists and technicians who annually visits the base.

Nowadays, it occupies a surface of almost 12 hectares counting with a launch pad of near 300 meters in length, and a permanent work force of 30 people. A well equiped integration building, machine shops, and a flight control center lets to develope extensive launching campaigns with a well established capability to launch balloons ranging from 1000 m3 to 400.000 m3.

The period of activity of the center goes from September to May time at which the winds move towards the east and the payloads are recovered in the southeast side of the country. For this operations the CNES is using a helicopter with the support of Land Rover vehicles. Althought back in the 80's was tested a flight technique called "boomerang" to perform flights over the Ocean, actually, during the summer months, the launches are performed from the alternative base of Gap-Tallard in the east side of the country.

In addition to the local launch activity, the center has one complete infrastructure developed completely in "transportable containers" wich allow to establish a movable launching point in any place of the world. Several campaigns were developed using this equipment, the latest ones from Timón in the northeast of Brazil (Southamerica) and from the military zone of the Nimaey airport in Niger (Africa).

Clearly, the early french interest in ballooning along with the sustained work during near 40 years lead to the actual leadership of the agency in the field, only shadowed in the rest of the world by the NASA's program.

Since June 2009 the balloon launch bases of Aire Sur L'Adour and Gap-Tallard are inactive as a result of an increment in the failure and safety requeriments on regard scientific ballooning. The greater population density, and the subsequent increasing of the air and ground traffic forced the aerial authorities to halt all balloon flights in France until a whole new strategy for solving safety issues could be outlined. This include the development of new control systems to make precision landings feasible among other factors.

Part of the text and images contained in this article was obtained from the excellent website "Nos Premières années dans l'espace" ("Our first years in space") run by our French friend Michel Taillade. The specific section about the french balloon program is located in http://homepage.mac.com/mbtc/sl/ballons/entreeballons.html

Balloon launched list