Details of the balloon and launch operations
Launch site: Centre de Lancement de Ballons CLBA, Aire Sur L'Adour, Landes, France
Launch team: CNES
Balloon: Open balloon model 402z 400.000 m3
Serial number: 402z Nº 85
Flight identification number: -
Campaign: -
Payload weight: 783 kgs
Gondola weight: 404 kgs
Overall weight: -
The balloon was launched by dynamic method with help of auxiliary balloons on april 22th, 2002 at 15.49 UTC.
After a initial ascent phase, float altitude of 40 km was achieved at 18.33 UTC mantaining that flight level during 1 hour and 40 minutes in order to allow the balloon to carry out the transition between the day and the night, and perform the testing of the onboard equipment.
At 20:10 utc the cutdown command was sent and the payload landed near the town of Foix.
Description of the payload or experiment
ORIENTABLE GONDOLA
Responsable institution: CNES - Division Ballons - Département Nacelles
Principal Investigator:
This technological flight of the pointed gondola tested the following systems
* two protoypes of wheels with inertia for the control of the nacelle
* stellar sensor ASC DTU (large field multi-stars) equipped with 2 optical heads -the standard head (night), and a head modified for diurnal sky (red filter)- and with a catalogue optimized for stars emitting in that spectrum.
* the stellar sensor Khayyam (small field mono-star)
* a system of imagery made up of 2 cameras (visible and red) to analyze the brightness of the bottom of sky
* a magnetometer DTU (momentary)
* a system of restitution of attitude by GPS (momentary)
* a prototype of system of balancing of the nacelle by transfer of fluid
* the system of nominal unballasting
Performance in flight and data obtained
>> No data available
External references and bibliographical sources
