Purpose of the flight and payload description
*** PAYLOAD DESCRIPTION WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON ***
Details of the balloon flight
Balloon launched on: 1/21/2001 at N
Launch site: TIFR National Balloon Facility, Hyderabad, India
Balloon launched by: National Balloon Facility, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Balloon manufacturer/size/composition: Zero Pressure Balloon Antrix - 413.927 m3
Flight identification number: 449
End of flight (L for landing time, W for last contact, otherwise termination time): 1/21/2001
Balloon flight duration (F: time at float only, otherwise total flight time in d:days / h:hours or m:minutes - ): 2 h
Payload weight: 697 kgs
Overall weight: 1315 kgs
External references
- A Balloon Experiment to Detect Microorganisms in the Outer Space Astrophysics and Space Science 285(2):555-562 ยท July 2003
- An Atmospheric Test of Cometary Panspermia Cosmic Ancestry website
- Bacillus aerius sp. nov., Bacillus aerophilus sp. nov., Bacillus stratosphericus sp. nov. and Bacillus altitudinis sp. nov., isolated from cryogenic tubes used for collecting air samples from high altitudes Int J Syst Evol Microbiol. 2006 Jul;56 (Pt 7):1465
- Bacterial morphologies in carbonaceous meteorites and comet dust SPIE conference 7819 Instruments, Methods, and Missions for Astrobiology XIII proceedings, R. B. Hoover, Ed
- Balloon up in the sky to study living organisms The Hindu newspaper, January 22, 2001 (via Archive.Org)
- Cosmology and the Origins of Life Journal of Cosmology, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 30001 - 30013
- Detection of microorganisms at high altitudes Current Science, Vol. 85, No. 1 (10 July 2003), pp. 23
- Mechanical properties of ANTRIX balloon film and fabrication of single cap large volume balloons Advances in Space Research 42 (2008) 1691
- Microorganisms cultured from stratospheric air samples obtained at 41 km FEMS Microbiology Letters 218 (2003) 161
- New Evidence Of Living Bacteria From Space Space Daily website
- Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe personal website
- Scientific ballooning in India - Recent developments Advances in Space Research, Volume 37, Issue 11, p. 2015
- SEM Imaging of Stratospheric Particles of Non-terrestrial Origin Microscopy and Chemistry of Airborne Particles. Current Research
- Study of putative microfossils in space dust from the stratosphere 2010, International Journal of Astrobiology
- The detection of living cells in stratospheric samples SPIE, 2002, Instruments, Methods, and Missions for Astrobiology IV
Images of the mission
If you consider this website interesting or useful, you can help me to keep it up and running with a small donation to cover the operational costs. Just the equivalent of the price of a cup of coffee helps a lot.
