First transatlantic flight of the year ends succesfully - 5/30/2009
Devon Island, Canada.- Was finally recovered succesfully the payload transported under the stratospheric balloon launched on may 17th, from the European Space Range launch base near Kiruna (right image). The recovery was carried out using a Twin Otter plane which landed on Devon Island, in north canada where the gondola landed on May 21.
That is a good culmination for the for the first transatlantic launch of 2009 performed as every year since 2005 by NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility.
As you may remember from past updates, the balloon -carrying onboard the LEE (Low Energy Electrons) experiment which measures the energy spectrum of comic ray electrons- was launched at 2:26 utc on May 17th under near perfect meteorological conditions, and after an initial ascent phase it reached a height of 43.5 km wich according sources from the Swedish Space Corporation is a record with such a heavy payload (about 600 kg of the payload and the entire flight train).
The rest of the details of the flight along with images of the launch operations, the balloon in flight and a detailed map of the route followed, can be seen in the flight data sheet just published today.
The work performed at ESRANGE since the arrival of the CSBF field team near a month ago included the installation of new tires and heavy-load leaf springs on the spool trailer used to hold the balloons at inflation and the servicing and rigging of the Hercules launch vehicle. Local teams also completed the last week a grooming of the launch pad.
Stay tuned to the activities at ESRANGE trough a live video feed over the internet obtained from a nearby hill.
More Information:
:: http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/sweden/sweden.htm Sweden campaign section at CSBF website
:: http://www.ssc.se/?id=14310 Swedish Space Corporation website
The epic flight of the Nuclear Compton Telescope - 5/20/2009
Fort Sumner, New Mexico.- Ok. May be that the title above is a bit "too much" to describe a simple balloon flight but you must take consideration two thinghs: as the webmaster of this site I can't be unbiased and besides all it was an awesome flight, really!. Take a look.
All started near a month ago when the team from the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California and National Tsing Hua and National Central universities from Taiwan, arrived to the Fort Sumner Airport in New Mexico to take part in the current NASA's spring balloon launch campaign with their baby: the Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT). This instrument was designed to study astrophysical sources of nuclear line emission and polarization in the soft gamma ray domain (0.2 to 15MeV). It employs twelve high spectral resolution germanium detectors with the ability to track the location of each photon interaction in three dimensions.
After a long month of integration all appeared to be ok when a fault was discovered in the rotor which connects the gondola to the balloon and aids to keep the instrument pointing to the desired target. A race against the clock started to obtain a good rotor from Berkeley before the onset of the turnaround, risking to slip last in the flight queue. Ten days after, in May 10, the new rotor arrived and the last testings commenced in what was called by the team the "monster week" which finished with the formal notification to CSBF that NCT was flight ready. A marginal launch window was forecasted for May 17 showing a total flight time of near 8 hours at float, which was too short for the science requeriments of the other team waiting for a flight, but was over the minimum science requeriments for NCT, so they were pointed to launch first.
The balloon was launched at 13:40 utc on May 17th under a overcast sky. The initial ascent was completed flawlessly and the float altitude of near 40 kms was succesfully achieved. Once there NCT started to point to the Crab Nebula, the primary science target, but soon was evident that there were some problems with the fine pointing system so manual corrections were performed from the ground during that portion of the flight. First, the balloon was in a southward flight path which endangered the continuation of the flight because it was approaching the no-fly zone located 50 miles before the Mexican border. Then, when the balloon was over Albuquerque it started to change the course and headed due west, changing the fly expectations: NCT would have a "bonus" time at float through the night.
At sunset, the balloon -as occured several times in clear days- offered quite a show reflecting the fading sun on their surface, and mesmerizing thousands of inhabitants of cities like El Paso (Texas) and Ciudad Juarez (Mexico) whom jammed the telefonic lines of local TV and radio stations concerned about the origin of the UFO their were watching in the sky.
As the night arrived, back in the hanger at Fort Sumner, the scientific team had to turn off the gondola because the voltage of the batteries was dropping. That was bad news because they would to wait to the daybreak for the sun to feed the solar panels and to turn on the instrument again. But the next morning was not better at all, although they would manage to start the instrument again, CSBF announced that the balloon was heading right into the forbidden airspace near Phoenix (AZ) and the flight would to be stoped in an hour or two. Also a GPS jamming exercise planned to be performed that morning from the White Sands Missile Range endangered a correct fixation of the balloon path affecting the data analysis after the flight.
Nevertheless, the luck was near to change again: at first try to start it up, NCT responded positivelly and soon the panels were seeking the sun and started to recharge the depleted batteries. The "thing" was alive again. A half an hour later word came from CSBF people that a new path change allowed to extend until 16:00 (local time) the termination. By that time the Crab Nebula was near to entering the field of view of the instrument again but... the direct link between the balloon and the base (known as Line of Sight link or LOS) was near to be lost due to the distance. This was already anticipated by CSBF days before, establishing a data relay station in Winslow (AZ) where part of the NCT team moved as soon as the balloon reached float altitude. The link was thus maintained but soon reappeared the power problems that the gondola experimented the day before along with erratic housekeeping readings, so just at the moment when the Crab nebula would be available to observe the system was shut down permanently.
The rest of the flight would be pure routine, but CSBF found that the balloon was flying over rough terrain and delayed several hours the cutdown, until a good point were found or the California border (the other no-fly zone) reached, the first to occur. Additionally severe storm warnings in the zone also worried the scientists.
During that time, the NCT balloon provoked again quite a conmotion in several cities sourrounding Phoenix and as occured the day before, thousands of Arizonans jammed the lines of their news media looking for an answer to the misterious "big bag" in the sky.
Finally, the mission was terminated (thank God!) at 3:24 utc on May 18th, in a point located 80 Miles west of Prescott, Arizona. Althought NCT is in excellent shape after landing with quite negligible damage, as a fair ending for a epic flight it's situated precariously on a steep slope a hard hour and a half hike from the nearest road, as can be seen in the image at right. A CSBF team is in the zone working with part of the NCT team. They hope today (May 20th) to stabilize the instrument and remove heavy components like the solar panels and batteries to get under the helicopter weight limit.
The total flight time for the mission was 38 hours and 37 minutes, which -according to our flights registries- set a new record for a conventional flight from Fort Sumner.
Fun ¿isn't?
More Information:
:: Dispatches from the Field Eric Bellm's blog on the NCT launch campaign
:: Gamma-ray astronomy @ SSL
:: An UFO near El Paso
:: Mystery solved: Object in sky identified
:: Video footage of NCT balloon by KPHO - Arizona
Voyage to the heart of a balloon campaign - 5/13/2009
Fort Sumner, NM, USA.- There is no doubt that the today's technologies like internet are making a great contribution to a lot of fields. They let us be aware of a lot of things and happenings (both useful and wasteful) in every topic a human being can be interested. And there is no exception on regard the main topic of this site: balloons, (in case you are a newcomer or still not discovery it :P) .
A balloon campaign (that is all the work involved to attach an instrument to a balloon, make it flight, retrieve the data and recover it as safe as possible) allways was a one of a kind event, since the old days of the scientific ballooning. And beyond the great advances the activity had, today's ballooning is not an exception: the sense of adventure remains intact.
I still enjoy reading which well would be the first "Field BLOG" of a balloon scientist, published in Military Medicine (Vol.119, p.154) in September 1956. Under the title of "Operation Stratomouse" Dr. Webb Haymaker share with the lector a first hand account of the misadventures of the operation crew in charge of the launch and recovery of 3 balloon-borne missions devoted to expose a bunch of mice to the rigors of the upper atmosphere, from the isolated US-Canada border. A lot of things changed since then: balloons are bigger, payloads heavier, they can fly higher, safer, and not so freely than in the past. But I can assure you, the same sense of adventure still remains in modern day ballooning.
You don't need to believe my words, take a look by yourself.
Two members of the scientific teams involved in the current balloon launch campaign at the Fort Sumner airport in New Mexico are writing their own BLOGs sharing with the world their day-to-day lives there. They are Asad Aboobaker from the University of Minnesota's EBEX experiment team who run "EBEX in flight" and Eric Bellm from Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California collaboration for the NCT Gamma Ray Telescope who publishes "Dispatches from the Field"
Take a look at them and enjoy the unique taste of a 21st. century scientific effort carried out with the help of a 18th century vehicle. After all, as can be read in a banner hanging in the integration building at Fort Sumner "Real scientists do it on balloons".
And speaking about the launch campaign, the launch window for turnaround will be opening soon so, stay tuned to th upcoming activity at Fort Sumner.
Fort Sumner campaign at full steam - 5/8/2009
Fort Sumner, NM, USA.- With the launch of the first balloon, on May 5, was formally started the spring launch campaign of the NASA balloon program that will be carried out from the Scientific Balloon Facility located in the Fort Sumner airport, in New Mexico.
The mission (numbered as 592N) started at 14:00 utc (7 AM local time) under a cloudy sky threatening rain as can be seen in the picture at right obtained from the roof top camera located in the main integration building of the facility. After launch, during the ascent phase the balloon headed east reaching float altitude near Portales and inverting again his course back to the west. The entire flight endured near 8 hours until 22:50 UTC (15:50 local time) when the termination signal was sent; 30 minutes later the payload landed in a point east of the Pecos River in the Chavez county, 60 km south of Fort Sumner.
This first mission was devoted to transport an instrument called CREST (Cosmic Ray Electron Synchrotron Telescope) developed by the Indiana University, with Dr. James Musser as Principal Investigator and the collaboration of the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Pennsylvania State University, University of Minnesota and Northern Kentucky University. The experiment was designed to measure the flux of primary cosmic ray electrons at energies greater than 1 TeV. In order to obtain the large exposure time and detector aperture required for this measurement, the approach used is based on the detection of synchrotron photons emitted by electrons in the Earth's magnetic field. It allows very large detector apertures, since the instrument need only intersect a portion of the line of photons, which extend over hundreds of meters of space, and not necessarily the electron itself. Conceptually, the detector has an effective area determined by the spatial extent of the synchrotron x-rays, and not the physical size of the detector.
This was the second flight of the instrument from Fort Sumner. The first flight took place in 2005 and was an engineering test flight. This year's payload was another test in preparation of the long duration flight with the full instrument configuration, expected to be carried out in Antarctica in 2010/2011 campaign.
Pictures and a preliminary flight report are available to read clicking here.
On may 7th, the morning news segment of the KRQE TV station from Albuquerque featured a telephonic interview with Danny Ball, CSBF Operations manager. It can be seen clicking here
Stay tuned for more information as campaign developes.
More Information:
:: http://pandora.physics.lsa.umich.edu/crest/ Main web site of the CREST project at Michigan University server
New article on Italian balloon launch base - 5/1/2009
After five months of research we pulished today a very detailed article about the main Italian stratospheric balloon facility: the "Luigi Broglio" balloon launch base in Sicily. It's rich history dates back to 1975 when served to perform a few transatlantic launches of balloons to United States and then also as starting point for the well known Transmediterranean flights to Spain.
The article offers an in deep account of the evolution and growing of the facility from those years to the present including a glimpse on the main advances of the Italian science in the field. As part of the research we added more data regarding balloon launches performed at the base covering now near 85% of the entire base's balloon flight record.
The article can be read at http://stratocat.com.ar/bases/64e.htm
