End for the first scientific campaign at Taiki - 9/28/2009

Hokkaido, Japan.-The flight devoted to test a new design of the future superpressure balloon, carried out on September 11 at the Aerospace Research Field located in the Multipurpose Air Park in Taiki, Hokkaido Island, marked the end of the second part of the first scientific balloon launch campaign.

The balloon was launched at 6:19 am local time, starting a eastward flight path until reach a distance from the shoreline of 130 km where it reached the float altitude of 32.6 km and started an inverse path. On that point of the flight was expected the full deployment of the balloon fabric achieving full presurization which according to JAXA sources, did not occured as expected. The mission was finally terminated two hours later when the balloon was separated from the control payload and descended south of Akkeshi Hamanaka city near 40 km of the shoreline, in the Pacific Ocean. Investigation is undergoing to establish the reason for the partial failure.

Although, there were planned other two missions during this final part of the campaign, the small incident that occured with the landing on land of the bCALET-2 balloon and that delayed the entire operations, forced two cancel the remaining flights, probably due to the closing of the launch window.

The next campaign will start in May 2010.

Two flights to start the fall campaign at Fort Sumner - 9/25/2009

Fort Sumner, New Mexico.- As occur each year on this months, a bunch of scientists, undergraduate students and technicians had flooded the NASA's Scientific Balloon Flight Facility located at the Fort Sumner Municipal Airport in New Mexico, waiting to launch their experiments to the stratosphere, something that almost two of the teams on the field already acomplished.

The first mission was carried out for the HASP (High Altitude Student Platform) initiative, being carried out each year by the Louisiana Space Consortium with the participation of several Universities and Colleges of all the United States. It consists in a multi-instrumented platform designed to carry up to twelve student payloads to an altitude of about 36 kilometers with flight durations of 15 to 20 hours using a small volume, zero pressure balloon. The payloads carried inside the HASP gondola are designed and built by students and are used to flight-test compact satellites or prototypes and to fly other small experiments. The state of Louisiana and the Louisiana Space Consortium have funded the construction and operation of HASP and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) through the NASA Balloon Program Office has committed to flying HASP once a year.

The balloon was launched at 14:48 utc on September 11, and after a nominal ascent it reached the float altitude of 124.000 ft being terminated after a flight of a little more of 14 hours at 5:35 utc on September 12. The payload landed with minor damage 45 nautic miles west of Phoenix, Arizona. At left can be seen an image obtained from Fort Sumner by the principal investigator of the project soon after the balloon reached levelled flight.

A detailed report of the different experiments transported on the HASP gondola, including images and maps can be seen clicking here

The second flight, had a double goal. While the main objective was to test in flight a new balloon being qualified SF-430-B W39L, also was mounted on the Thunderbird technological gondola the so called Mirror Cooling System whose objective was to try to cool a one square meter mock mirror using liquid nitrogen and a mechanical cooler device to maintain its temperature in the balloon environment at about 100 degrees Kelvin. That test is part of the ICARUS project, an effort being carried out by a team from the University of Pennsylvania under the guidance of Dr. Mark Devlin (a well known scientists that participated recently on BLAST mission). The final model for ICARUS will eventually need to cool a 3 meter diameter mirror to that temperature.

The balloon was launched, after a first cancelled attempt at 13:46 utc on September 19 being nomenclated as flight 601-NT and developing a erratic flight path typical of the turnaround period during the near 24 hours that endured the flight. The mission was terminated at 12:42 utc on September 20 and the payload landed 13 nautic miles north of Las Vegas, New Mexico. On regard the termination at right can be seen an animation that we ensambled from a series of images taken from Alto, Ruidoso, New Mexico by the photographer David L.Tremblay who managed to obtain a superb sequence of the exact moment of the separation of the payload and the balloon collapse, while the fading Sun illuminated all the scene. Really those images are one of a kind. Click here to see a bigger version of the same sequence.

Stay tuned for more information on the flights to come. The schedule for the rest of the campaign include another technological flight to test a new balloon (that will include a scientific instrument called Solar Disk Sextant as piggy back) and two scientific missions one for ProtoEXIST and the other for the STO (Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory)

End of the scientific phase of StraPolÉté Campaign - 9/18/2009

Kiruna, Sweden.- With the launch of the LPMA mission on September 7 from the Swedish base of ESRANGE near Kiruna, all the scientific flights planned were completed. The StraPolÉté (Stratosphère Polaire en Été or Polar Stratosphere in Summer) campaign that started in early August had as main objective the study of the Arctic stratosphere in the summertime.

The balloon was launched at 14:50 utc and lasted in leveled flight until September 8 at 6:07 utc when the mission was terminated. The instrument transported by the balloon was LPMA (Limb Profile Monitor of the Atmosphere) a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer operating in solar absorption covering the spectral signatures of HNO3, O3, N2O, CH4; NO, H2O; NO2, HCl, CH4; HF, and H2O. Complementary to LPMA the Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS) instrument observed direct sunlight in the UV and visible spectral range targeting specifically species like O3, NO2, and BrO.

Additionally, two small versatile UV/visible spectrometers (referred to as "mini-DOAS") were deployed on the same gondola and observed scattered skylight in limb scattering geometry. One mini-DOAS was operated in fixed limb and nadir geometry, while the second one measured in limb scanning mode. Finally as ocurred in all the flight of the campaign was also included on board STAC, an aerosol counter that can measure the size distribution and the concentration of aerosols from the middle troposphere up to the middle stratosphere.

Before and after the LPMA flight, two other balloons were launched by the CNES balloon division team in charge of field operations. Both missions had a technological aim: the test in flight of a new rip panel to reinforce the security mkeasures to assure the total destruction of the balloons once his mission has ended. The balloons were built by Zodiac and had an identical volume (100.000 m3). The first test dubbed as CNES TECH 1 was performed on September 6 and the second one dubbed as CNES TECH 2 on September 12.

A third planned technological mission was cancelled so now the launch campaign is officially closed.

More Information:

:: http://strapolete.cnrs-orleans.fr/ Projet StraPolÉté website

China tested a new dropsonde system - 9/17/2009

Inner Mongolia, China.- On last August, Chinese scientists succeded in launching a newly developed system intended to obtain meteorological data on zones where this information can't be obtained. The balloon was launched on August 5 from the Xilin Gol plateau in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the northwest part of the country. At left can be seen an image of the initial ascent phase.

The succesfull test is the culmination of two years of work in the design and built of the system called "Dropsonde" that allows to launch from the gondola of a balloon in fligth small devices that can measure while falling to earth, several key atmospheric parameters (pressure, humidity, temperature, wind direction, and so on.). The drop command is transmited via satellite during the flight and each of the sondes counts also with a GPS system for localization. The system is similar to the "Driftsonde" system developed by US and France which was recently tested in a balloon campaign from Hawaii.

The research effort has been carried out by the Laboratory for Middle Atmosphere and Global Enviroment Observation (LAGEO), part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences's Institute of Atmospheric Physics, which was involved in the scientific ballooning since the start of that activity in China in 1978.

As a matter of fact, the Chinese balloon program was almost inactive in the last years mainly due to some troubles that arose on regard air safety issues on the Xiang-He launch base near Beijing. However, things are changing fast and now the program is in the middle of a rebirth process that includes the development of bigger balloons, the establishment of a new base in isolated zones of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and in a second phase the realization of long duration missions along with Russia as well in Antarctica.

First time a balloon lands on the ground at Taiki prompts investigation - 9/6/2009

Hokkaido, Japan.-The sixth mission of the first scientific campaign at the balloon launch base of the Japanese space agency located in the Multipurpose Air Park in Taiki, Hokkaido Island, ended with some headlines in the news.

On August 25 took place the B09-08 mission devoted to flight test a balloon-borne reduced prototype (1/32 scale) of a Gamma Ray and High Energy detector known as CALET (CALorimetric Electron Telescope) whose final aim is to be installed permanently in the International Space Station. The launch of the 100.000 m3 balloon occured at 6:21 local time and by the time it reached the ceiling altitude of 33.9 km, it had drifted 75 km east from the launch site. Then in the leveled portion of the flight the craft developed first a westward path and then a southwest one until 11:00 local time when the payload was seperated from the balloon. While the payload splashed down in the Ocean in a point located 25 km East of the shore, the deflated balloon descended slowly than anticipated and drifting eastward finally landed on a mountain range near Hiroo in Hokkaido. Althought no damage was reported, the operations were halted until an investigation concluded that all the security systems operated well and the unexpected landing was not due to onboard systems malfunction so in September 4, the agency resumed the campaign.

A report including images of the launch and a detailed explanation of the scientific objective of bCALET can be seen clicking here