Balloon incident in Australia -( Update # 2 )- 4/30/2010

Alice Springs, Australia.- According to first hand accounts from the launch field, a catastrophic failure occured during the launch of the balloon that would carry aloft the NCT (Nuclear Compton Telescope) developed by the University of California.

Eric Bellm, an undergraduate student of the NCT project, posted in his blog Dispatches from the Field a few minutes after the incident the following:

"...It's hard to find words to describe what just happened. We had a complete launch failure and abort, and much of the gondola and its systems were destroyed. Thankfully no one was hurt. A full accounting will have to wait-for now we're just trying to pick up the pieces..."

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation had a team in the airport filming the launch for a future segment in "Catalyst" a science program of the Network, and obtained a very shocking testimony of the moment when the payload is released and immediatelly hits the ground and is dragged by the balloon moving on the wind. On his path it smash into a fence before hitting a stationary car. The video can be seen bellow.

The director of the Australian Launch Station, Ravi Sood, says no one was hurt adding that the scientists involved in the NASA-sponsored project are crushed. "...Ballooning, that's the way it happens on occasions but it is very, very disappointing. Gut-wrenching actually..." he said.

A few hours after the crash NCT's Eric Bellm published in his blog the feelings of the team on regard this issue "...Today was a terrible day for a lot of people. For the NCT team, we've poured our hearts into this instrument for years. It was an almost unfathomable shock to find ourselves cleaning up the wreckage of our gondola rather than watching it lift off towards space..."

Later adding that "...Given the media attention this incident has brought, I'm inclined not to discuss the crash in too much detail. Obviously there will be a full investigation into what went wrong today, so it doesn't seem helpful to add premature speculation. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the CSBF personnel, and I'd like to avoid complicating the process for them. In short, NCT came off the launch vehicle badly and hit the ground several times as the abort completed..."

Althought there another instrument called HERO (High-Energy Replicated Optics) developed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, waiting his turn to be launched at the same Australian Launch Station, there are high chances that all operations would be halted until an investigation can clarify what happened.

Surely, in normal circunstances the investigation would take months to see the light, if ever see it to the public opinion, but taking account of the widespread and worldwide coverage of the incident, perhaps the results of the investigation will be made public more quickly. Yesterday the agency published a brief statement on the issue at NASA main website.

The opinion of the experts

For our part, as we were not personally involved in the ballooning field we decided to make some consultations with two different persons whom have a strong background in the ballooning field. They prefer to remain anonymous but agreed to send us their impressions based on the public video to obtain some preliminary conclusions.

Expert #1: "...First, it appears that the winds were too strong at mid- and upper-levels on the balloon and flight train. Second, the alignment of the crane/launch vehicle appears to be at least ninety degrees off the wind direction and turning more away from the wind. This compounded the wind speed problem. Third, the balloon apparently had not reached equilibrium nor had it achieved lift. But had they not released it from the crane when they did, it would have turned the crane over on its side. That is apparent from the pendulum arch the payload took as it came off the crane and impacted the ground..."

Expert #2: "...In order for a balloon to lift a very heavy payload to the stratosphere, it requires a very large balloon with a lot of helium. The large amount of helium causes the balloon to rise very quickly when it is released. Any change in the wind causes big problems for the crew to align the launch vehicle correctly before the balloon starts to pull on the payload. It is apparent that the balloon got in front of the payload before the launch vehicle could get in the correct alignment for a good launch. The balloon apparently tore the payload off of the launch vehicle. With the balloon ahead of the payload, the payload did a pendulum motion hitting the ground and dragging before the parachute could be released from the balloon by command..."

Finally, from this humble place we send all our appreciation to all the people part of the NCT team and specially those in Australia. They are now doing the hardest part of the road that leads to more and better science. However, that same road, when the losses are only in terms of materials and not people, always gives a second chance. Sooner or later NCT will fly again.

Kick off for techno-scientific campaign at ESRANGE - 4/21/2010

Kiruna, Sweden.- On past April 4, started a new stratospheric balloon launch campaign carried out by the Balloon Division of the French Space Agency CNES. The campaign will endure until May and will have a dual purpose: on one side the launch of several scientific instruments related essentially to atmospheric sciences, and in the other side several technological missions devoted mainly to validate a new flight termination system, to test a pointing system and the verification of a new balloon developed by the French firm Zodiac signs. The launches are conducted from the Esrange base run by the Swedish Space Corporation near the town of Kiruna, in northern Sweden.

So far there have been four flights out of a total of ten originally planned. The first two corresponded to the ELHYSA hygrometer operated by the French Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement, which was launched as opening flight of the campaign on April 4 and once again on April 9. The other two missions -both technological- were carried out respectively on April 11 and April 21, using Zodiac balloons of 100,000 cubic meters of volume.

As for the upcoming scientific flights, the instruments remaining to be launched include: LPMA (Limb Profile Monitor of the Atmosphere - SWIR) a Fourier transform spectrometer in the configuration of short-wave infrared observation (SWIR: Shortwave Infrared), and ISAO/SP2/LDLE a multi-instrumental mission that will include a light version of the SAOZ spectrometer and two different types of sondes to measure atmospheric electricity.

It is noteworthy that on each of the scientific flights will be included onboard as a "piggy back" payload the STAC instrument that measures the concentration of aerosols between the high troposphere and the middle stratosphere.

More information:

:: Swedish Space Corporation website
:: Campaign annoucemment at CNES website

Succesful end for the first mission launched from Australia - 4/19/2010

Alice Springs, Australia.- After a flight of near 54 hours, the balloon launched on April 16, from the Australian Balloon Launch Station located in the Seven Mile area of the Alice Spring airport in the center of Australia, was taken down. The landing site was located 70 km SW of Longreach, Queensland.

According to the statement published by the local press, the payload landed "...very close to a farm track, so we should have our recovery people there some time this morning..." said Prof. Ravi Sood, director of the launch facility adding that "...the balloon landed separately about 20 kilometres west of where the instrument and the parachute impacted...". No mention was made to damages suffered in the landing.

This balloon flight was a very succesfull start for the first stratospheric balloon campaign carried out by NASA and the University of New South Wales after an impasse of seven years. The last campaign held at the site (devoted to test an early design of the ULDB balloon carrying also an experiment called "Nightglow") was performed by NASA's balloon program in 2003.

As you may remember from our past update, the launch occured in the morning on Friday April 16, and according to sources of another scientific team in the field, the balloon reached float altitude flawlessly. The balloon was quite an spectacle for the people of the city as the slow moving stratospheric winds had it hovering in the neighbourhood for a while.

At left we can see an image of the balloon at float obtained by Eric Bellm using a theodolite (hence the black line from the instrument's centering marks). He is a member of the NCT team (the next instrument in the launch row) who is maintaining informed the world of the ongoings of the campaign in the outback through his awesome blog Dispatches from the Field.

A video of the launch can be seen in the coverage of the event made by the Australian Broadscating Corporation.

The balloon (nomenclated as mission 611N under the records of the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility), carried onboard and instrument developed by the University of California, Riverside known as TIGRE (Tracking and Imaging Gamma Ray Experiment). It is a Compton telescope of new design, composed of layers of double sided silicon strip detectors that detect charged particles passing through it, and several complementary layers of cadmium zinc telluride strip detectors. This configuration allows TIGRE to record large angle Compton scatter events, greatly enhancing the instrument's efficiency, and providing the ability to perform as a gamma-ray polarimeter. This was the second and longest flight of TIGRE after a first engineering flight performed at Fort Sumner, New Mexico in 2007.

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

Succesful drop test of the USV-2 Polluce off shore Sardignia - 4/13/2010

Tortoli Arbatax Airport, Sardignia.- A few days ago was acomplished the second flight of the USV (Unmanned Space Vehicle). The model was transported by a stratospheric balloon launched from the Tortoli-Arbatax airport in Sardignia at 8:45 local time on April 11. At right we can see an image of the test plane hanging from the big crane that acted as launch vehicle. The launch window opened last January, but adverse weather forced to cancel several times the test until now.

The launch operation was developed flawlessly: once finished the inflation process, the balloon (measuring 340.000 cubic meter of volume) was released, elevating smoothly the down looking space plane model in a slow ascent while at the same time the prevailing westerlies pushed it into the sea. A little more of an hour after launched the balloon reached float altitude of 24 km, and entered in a no fly/no navigation zone under the control of the Poligono Interforze di Salto di Quirra (PISQ). There, at aproximately 10:15 the model was released starting a phase of free fall during which it attained a speed close to 1.2 Mach, performing several maneuvers and recording millions of bytes of data. After a fall of 140 seconds, started the parachute opening sequence which led the plane to a safe splash down in the Ocean 10 minutes later. Once was confirmed the completion of the free fall phase, the balloon still in flight was terminated and the gondola that served of "hook" for the USV vehicle was separated from it, hitting the ocean surface under his own parachute at 11:10.

After the end of the mission, was started the next phase for the recovery of the plane. It was in charge of the Italian Military Navy using the ship "Tavolara". It managed to recover the USV from the Ocean at 17:30.

According to the first press release from CIRA (Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali) -the Italian aerospace center in charge of the project- unlike occured in the first mission in 2007 when the twin vehicle "CASTORE" break apart when touched down, this time "POLLUCE" was found completely undamaged and fully functional.

The objective of this second mission was the acquisition of flight data in a phase particularly critical and deserving of further study: the trans-sonic flight. Also were included two scientific experiments onboard one consisted in the use of a MEMS (Micro Electrical Mechanical System) based sensor device to record acceleration data during USV flight and splash down phases and the other designed by some high schools in Puglia, aimed at detecting the opacity of the atmosphere related to the presence of aerosols.

Another test from a balloon is expected for the near future with "POLLUCE" before a first mission of a more advanced model using a VEGA launcher as vector for a suborbital reentry.

More information:

:: CIRA web site in Italian
:: Polluce in missione in Italian

In memoriam of an unsung Hero - 4/8/2010

A few days ago we communicated the news of the failing health of Dr. David G. Simons. Although we knew of his situation several weeks before, it seemed prudent to us not to disclose it until other sources close to Simons did, as occured with the publication in the spacedoc Newsletter on March 31.

In the same way as we learned of his death, thanks to our good friend and collaborator Gregory Kennedy, decided not to add anything more, waiting for the words that only he -someone who had known, studied and admired the life of this true hero the pre-space era- could write.

Therefore, we believe that the best farewell we can give from these pages is just talk about what he did. There is no better epitaph than that.

We leave you with his posthumous tribute which more than an obituary, its a truly celebration of Simons life.

Rest in peace.

The ARCA black solar balloon failed again - 4/4/2010

Constanta Naval Base, Black Sea.- The similarity between the image at right and the image that we published in our last update in November could cause the reader to assume a failure on our site, or a kind of cyber-DEJA VU. The true is that the team of the Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA) was not able to let the balloon flight, due to the entanglement of the inflation tubes that would be used to fill the balloon, while floating in the Black Sea surface of the Romanian coast.

The team is participating of the Google Lunar X PRIZE a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth. The intention of ARCA is to use a balloon as a virtual first stage to transport to the stratosphere the HELEN rocket to be fired from there. The choosing of the black polyethilene film balloon is also innovative because it will sharply reduce the cost of such a mission as the bag is not filled with helium but with air which is heated by the sun rays.

Aside from some experiments made by the French balloon program in the first stages of development of the MIR (Montgolfier Infrared) balloon in the 70's and other experiences made by the Indian program with black tinted polyethilene balloons in that same epoch, this is the first time that such an aproach is choosen.

The mission that started in middle March counted as in the previous attempt with the support of the Romanian navy which provided three ships. After this new failure surely the balloon inflation system will be re-designed to overcome the recurrent failure. No date of a new launch attempt was given yet by the team.

On a final note we must say that as far as we know ARCA is the first civilian team that tried to launch a balloon from the sea surface. The other only reference we known comes from project "Wetfoot" a research program carried out in the sixties by the Office of Naval Research of the US NAVY. It was tested with a launch performed from the Lake Michigan and another test carried out off-shore the eastern coast of the United States. Nevertheless the promising results, the system never become operational.

More information:

:: ARCA web site
:: Google Lunar X-Prize