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Data of the stratospheric balloon launched on 12/28/2000For ATIC (Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter)
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Details of the balloon and launch operations
Launch site:Williams Field, McMurdo Base, Antarctica Launch team: National Scientific Balloon Facility (NSBF) Balloon: Open balloon (zero pressure) Volume: 800.000 m3 Serial number: - Flight identification number: 493N Campaign: - Payload weight: 3470 lbs Gondola weight: - Overall weight: 4935 lbs The balloon was launched by dynamic method assisted by launch vehicle on December 28th, 2000, at 4:25 utc, and after reach float altitude, started an anti-clockwise path above the Antarctic Plateau. For January 6th, 2001 the ATIC balloon had traveled half way around the continent with all their systems are performing well. Finally, after an almost 17 day flight the ATIC balloon flight was terminated from the chase LC-130 plane on January 13th, 2001 at 16:56 local time. The instrument took about 40 minutes to parachute down to the Antarctic continent surface and landed upright and in good condition at 75º 30.13' S, 154º 5.23' E. The recovery crew aboard a Twin Otter reached the landing site on January 23th finding that apparently the payload suffered only minimal damage in the solar arrays and the external frame. However, after removing the bottom hemisphere of the pressure vessel the recovery crew found that 3 out of 4 electronics bay had broken support structures. Presumably this damage occurred during parachute deployment when the experiment is subject to the largest stress (10 g's) of the flight. |
ImagesClick to enlarge. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() © ATIC web site |
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Description of the payload or experiment
ATIC (Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter) Responsable institution: Louisiana State University Principal Investigator: Dr. John P. Wefel An instrument composed mainly by a ionization calorimeter with the objective of to measure the cosmic ray proton and helium spectra from below 5 x 1010 eV to more than 1014 eV, with statistical accuracy better than 30% at the highest energy. This unique coverage with a single instrument, will enable the scientists to investigate the spectral difference between hydrogen and helium, and identify any spectral breaks over a broad energy range. In addition, ATIC filled an existing gap in measurements of the proton/alpha ratio between observations below 100 GeV and the highest emulsion chamber energies. Concurrently, ATIC will measure the spectra of nuclei up to iron, with individual element resolution and superior energy resolution. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Performance in flight and data obtainedDuring this first flight all systems performed very well and were recorded more than 45 Gbytes of high energy cosmic ray measurements. |
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External references and bibliographical sources
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| If you detected mistakes in the information presented here, please tell me (Updated on 17-Aug-2007 - 03:27:11pm) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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