Succesfull launch of the third antarctic balloon - 12/30/2008

Williams Field, Antarctica.-On December 28, started succesfully the most important mission for the NASA balloon group: the flight test of the scaled up version of the new design of the ULDB (Ultra Long Duration Balloon) which was finally launched after waiting for the right weather during ten days.

According to first hand sources, the launch was smooth and under excellent weather conditions at 15:30 local time from the Long Duration balloon base located at Williams Field airport, near McMurdo. By 18:12 the balloon reached de nominal float altitude of 111.200 feet. Once there, the 6.000.000 cubic feet volume balloon was at full superpressure regime achieving an internal pressure of 50 Pa.

Worth to mention is the fact that this mission was the same which failed at launch during the last autumn campaign in Fort Sumner, New Mexico due to a faulty inflation tube.

Until the moment of writing this all systems are performing well and the balloon is maintaining both the internal pressure and the altitude unaltered.

For more information on the project's ongoing check out Mike Smith's Blog The Adventures of Stratodude.

ANITA flying high over Antarctica again - 12/22/2008

Williams Field, Antarctica.- Merely two days after the first scientific instrument was succesfully injected in the stratospheric polar vortex, the NASA balloon program launched a second one from the Long Duration balloon Base stablished each year at Williams Field airport, near McMurdo base.

The smooth launch occured at 10:17 am local time on December 21th. Under the 40 million cubic feet balloon was hanging the ANITA instrument which stands for Antarctic Impulse Transient Antenna. It is a radio telescope to detect ultra-high energy cosmic-ray neutrinos. It detects these ultra-high energy particles by use of the Askaryan effect. This effect predicts the production of a coherent radio emission from the cascade of particles produced in a high-energy particle interaction. The project is carried out by the University of Hawaii and the collaboration of several others.

The initial ANITA team arrived the first week of November and started to assemble the major structure of inusual gondola which was all put together by November 12.

In the last days of November a three person party of the ANITA team left the base via Twin Otter to go up to the so called Taylor Dome to install a remote GPS-synchronized pulser. This system will be used to provide impulses from under the ice, about 100 m deep, which will be received by the ANITA instrument in flight to make important calibrations.

Another remarkably feature of the instrument is that the battery box must be well thermically balanced so it is painted half white, half black. To add an artistic twist to this technical fact, the ANITA team organized as occured during the first scientific flight in 2006 an art contest for the battery box. This year's winner was Cody Meyer, one of the head cooks of the base. Additional painting was also provided by another individual who recreated part of a famous M. C. Escher print which uses tesselated white and black lizards (see left image).

The final hang test was carried out on December 7th, declaring the instrument "flight ready". After that the only barrier between ANITA and the stratosphere was the weather and the fact that the vortex was not formed yet. On December 20th, was the first launch attempt but was cancelled later in the day because of some technical difficulties on the flightline.

Finally the balloon was launched and after 8 hours of initial climb it reached float altitude near 120.000 feet to succesfully ride over the polar vortex to start his first Antarctic turn. The impressive image of the right was obtained by the ANITA principal Investigator Dr. Peter Gorham through a telescope using the digital camera of Mike Smith, engineer of the ULDB project and owner of the Adventures of Stratodude blog. In our humble opinion this is the best shot we have ever seen of a stratospheric balloon at float. Congratulations to both!

First balloon of the season launched from McMurdo - 12/19/2008

Williams Field, Antarctica.- The first launch of the 2008-2009 long duration balloon season was carried out succesfully, on December 18th, lifting the CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass) instrument developed by the University of Maryland and NASA Wallops Flight Facility. The instrument which was built to explore the supernova acceleration limit of cosmic rays, the relativistic gas of protons, electrons and heavy nuclei arriving at Earth from outside the solar system is performing his fouth polar trip.

As you may remember from our first update on the campaign, the three scientific teams of this year's flights were on the ice working on their payloads and systems in the last days of November. On Monday December 1th, CREAM team completed the integration of the instrument and performed a full compatibility test to assure the good communication between onboard balloon operation systems and the scientific part of the flight.

Following the test, the payload was declared "flight ready" and placed in a routine daily maintenance status awaiting the establishment of the austral summer circulation pattern.

To assess this was launched on December 6th a first "Pathfinder" balloon with the objective of plotting the wind circulation pattern, but soon after launch the balloon burst, and the small cargo landed approximately 2.5 miles northwest of the LDB Site. A second "Pathfinder" was then launched two days later this time with success, but it drifted to East indicating the anticyclone was not set yet.

As the conditions were not yet adecquate to launch the two scientific payloads, decision was taken to change the launch order and to try to flight the ULDB balloon at the first chance, althought the vortex was still not stable. Meanwhile the CREAM instrument, just waiting the "go ahead" signal was put on flight mode status to try to catch some of the rare particles intended to detect from the stratosphere during the pre-launch days.

The first attempts to launch the ULDB were cancelled in the following days due to the forecast of unacceptable low level winds so in December 17th, things changed again: after launching another pathfinder on December 16 the little data obtained during that short flight showed a more stable Vortex forming. Also after reviewing the wind charts, the NASA balloon program management instructed to offer the next launch opportunity to the CREAM payload.

After the new good news, a rush of activity was put on CREAM to complete the flight readiness review and perform changes to all the mechanical and electronic systems necessary to move CREAM into the launch ready mode.

The first launch attempt was on December 17th but was cancelled after low level winds did not shift around and decrease as initially hoped. The same occured witht the second opportunitty the next day, aborted by the same reason. However the luck was near to change: finally on the third attempt the CREAM payload was succesfully launched at 11:00 AM (New Zealand Time the McMurdo local time) on December 19th. According to NASA sources it was a smooth launch in good weather conditions. The balloon reached float at 15:18 local at an altitude of 128.000 feet with a heading and speed of 286 degrees at 12 kts with all the science and command systems functioning normally.

More information and pictures on CREAM at University of Maryland website

New cancellation for the FITE telescope in Brazil - 12/17/2008

Cachoeira Paulista, Brazil.- Finally, the launch campaign for the first flight of the Japanese telescope FITE (Far-Infrared Interferometric Telescope Experiment), was cancelled again. Technical problems and strong stratospheric winds prevented this year's launch. The operation was intended to be carried out in the main base of Brazil's Space Agency (INPE) run by the Setor de Lancamento de Baloes (balloon launch sector) located in Cachoeira Paulista in Sao Paulo state.

As you may remember from past updates, the FITE experiment started in 2003 to develope a proof-of-concept balloon-borne instrument equipped with a Michelson interferometer, that will achieve the tremendous spatial resolution in far-infrared of about 1 arcsec at 100 micron. Hopefully it will open a new frontier to study dusty universe in far infrared. FITE is a collaboration among Universities of Nagoya and Osaka as well Japan space agency JAXA. At left we can see an image of the telescope during the integration phase in front of the main hangar of SLB launch base.

Decision on flight cancellation was taken on December 10th, because during FITE's testing and calibration phase the instrument presented less than the desired precision in the optic alignment of the detector system, with only seven days remaining to the close of the launch window. Also contributed to the decision the fact that due to the increased speed of high altitude winds the desired number of flight hours at float altitude probably would not achieved. The launch will take place the next year.

This flight was intended originally to be done in Brazil in 2007, but it was delayed due to several problems with the cryostat, a key component of the instrument whose purpose is to cool to near 2 degrees Kelvin the detectors of the telescope, the only way to detect the faint infrared radiation. The leak then detected in the cryostat forced to repair it and thus the scientific launch campaign was delayed until this year.

Besides the cancellation, during the campaign two small balloons were launched devoted to make wind soundings and test systems. The first one -a small weather balloon made of neoprene- was launched on december 2th at 10:00 local time with a flight duration of near 2 hours at 32 km of height. The second one, a 1000 m3 plastic balloon was launched at 6 local time on December 7th and also achieved a two hour flight. Both payloads were recovered in São José do Barreiro, near Sao Paulo.

Thank you so much to Oscar Fernandez from INPE who provided the information and images.