New article on EXCELSIOR project - 3/17/2010
As we wait for the Red Bull Stratos mission, our friend and collaborator, Gregory Kennedy give us a detailed account of the Excelsior program in an article entitled "Joseph W. Kittinger and the Highest Step in the World" that we published today on the site.
With his characteristic style, Kennedy tells us about one of the most daring endeavours ever conducted by the Air Force of the United States. The program, carried out in the late fifties, was looking for a safe way to allow the bail-out of pilots and future astronauts from extreme heights.
Russia grants to Sweden permission for balloons overflights - 3/11/2010
Moscow, Russia.- During the recent visit of Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt to Russia, both countries signed several cooperation agreements. One of special interest for the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) was the one that marked the end of the negative to allow balloons launched from ESRANGE launch base, located near Kiruna in the Arctic circle zone, to make circumpolar flights that overflight the Russian territory. These are indeed great news for the international scientific ballooning community.
"Balloon flights with longer duration that have been possible so far, are something that many scientists have requested, this agreement will make it available and also, it will further strengthen our position as the leading balloon launch service provider in the northern hemisphere" declared to the press Mr. Lennart Poromaa, General manager of SSC's Science Services Division.
Circumpolar flights during the winter, when the winds in the stratosphere blow from the West, have been performed from Kiruna for many years. At right can be seen an image of Russian military showing a payload recovered near the Urals. It has been launched from ESRANGE several days before.
Those flights included missions to circle the pole several times or long duration balloon flights that deep penetrated the Russian territory, and lasted from early 70's until the end of the 90's when Russian authorities refused to allow this kind of long duration flights anymore. The recent development of Transatlantic flights with NASA to Canada in the summer helped to regain some long duration capability, that now can be fully exploited both in summer and winter months.
This change of actitude seems to end with a historical distrust dating from the pre-satellite cold war days, when the US Military used hundred of stratospheric balloons to spy the territory of the formely Soviet Union, something that Sweden scientists experienced first-hand when in 1985 a runaway balloon launched from ESRANGE entered the territory of the former Soviet Union and was shoot down by fighters near the Finnish border.
An history that deserves to be told. Soon.
Setting the stage in the outback - 3/9/2010
Alice Springs, Australia.- After an absence of near seven years, the big bags return to the center of Australia. Since the first days of Febraury, a bunch of scientists and technicians from United States had " flooded" the renewed facilities of the Australian Balloon Launch Station located in the north sector of the Alice Springs Airport. They will took part in the first campaign held at the site since the last launches (devoted to test an early design of the ULDB balloon carrying also an experiment called "Nightglow") performed by NASA's balloon program in 2003.
Between 8 and 12 of Febraury arrived to Alice Springs the sea containers with all the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) outfitting materials and equipment. That included also an air shipment to transport equipment coming from the LDB facility in Antarctica. That same week arrived the CSBF technical crew which almost inmmediatelly started the wiring of the main services (telephone, internet, power, and so on) in both the old and new integration buildings, and the installation of the telemetry station. These tasks were all completed completed by 26 February, as well the setup of UPS units in all areas and the installation of the Telemetry antenna.
Next step was to return to an operational status several launch items that were stored permanently in Alice Springs as the launch spool, the balloon trailer and the movable crane that will be act as launch vehicle.
The campaign will include three launches, for the benefit of several Universities in the United States. The first team to arrive to the base was from the University of California, Riverside in charge of TIGRE (Tracking and Imaging Gamma Ray Experiment) a Compton telescope of new design. It is composed of layers of double sided silicon strip detectors that detect charged particles passing through the detector, and layers of cadmium zinc telluride strip detectors. This configuration allows TIGRE to detect large angle Compton scatter events, greatly enhancing the instrument's efficiency, and providing the ability to perform as a gamma-ray polarimeter.
This will be the second flight of TIGRE after a first engineering flight performed at Fort Sumner in 2007. After the payload surface shipment arrived to Alice Springs the science group started the integration process of the instrument which is being completed now. As far as we know, As far as we know, TIGRE is in the first place in the launch list with a tentative launch date nearing the last week of March.
The second team to arrive at the field was from the California Institute of Technology in charge of the NCT (Nuclear Compton Telescope) which as our clever readers guessed is another Compton telescope but with a diffrent aproach than TIGRE: NCT uses twelve 3D imaging, high spectral resolution germanium detectors enclosed on the sides and bottom by an active bismuth germanate well. The core of its working principle is that measuring the position and energy of the interactions of a photon that enters the instrument with high precision, it can be reconstructed through the Compton formula to determine the initial photon direction to within an annulus on the sky. The main goal of the team for this third flight of the instrument will be to observe the Galactic center.
The major part of the payload traveled all the way from United States by ship, but the core of the instrument, the Cryostat arrived to Sidney in a plane with Eric Bellm, a undergraduate student of the NCT project, who made a 3 day trip to Alice Spring to carry it safelly. A detailed account of the trip as well all the news from the campaign can be read in the fantastic blog Dispatches from the Field. By the way we wish thanks to Eric by the awesome picture he share with the world and that we used to ilustrate this newsitem.
The last team to set foot on the base was from the Marshall Space Flight Center, responsible of HERO (High Energy Replicated Optics) the first X-Ray telescope aimed to obtain focused images of astronomical X-ray sources at hard X-ray energies (20-75 keV). The key component are the optics, which are full-shell electroformed-nickel-replicated mirrors coated with iridium to enhance high-energy reflectivity. Althought the payload reached Melbourne, it was not possible to send it from there to Alice Springs due to the bad weather conditions in the area. Also the zone of Alice Spring was hit by severe storms that provoked some flooding around the city, delaying a bit the arrival of the helium cilynders coming from Darwin (in the north part of the country). Initially the shipment was meant to be send to Alice Springs by rail, but the line was closed in several points after the storm and was necessary to switch to road transportation.
Stay tuned for additional data soon.
More information:
:: Australia 2010 campaign page at Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility web site
:: Dispatches from the Field a BLOG by Eric Bellm of the NCT team
