CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass) -2004-

Data of the stratospheric balloon launched on 12/16/2004

For CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass)

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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: Raven - 39.000.000 cuft - (0.8 Mil)
Serial number: -
Flight identification number: 539N
Campaign: -
Payload weight: -
Gondola weight: -
Overall weight: -

The balloon was launched at 17:28 NZT on December 16th 2004, by dynamic method using launch vehicle (The Boss).

Following a nominal ascent phase, the balloonn leveled at float height and started to travel in a anticlockwise trajectory. After 31 days at float, on January 16th ~19:40 pm EST, he broke the long duration balloon record of endurance of 31 days and 20 hrs, impossed by the TIGER flight in the 2001-2002 campaign.

Finally the balloon landed on January 27, 2005 in a point located 660 kilometers (410 miles) from McMurdo Station after make 3 turns around the south pole, on 41 days and 22 hours, setting a new world record of endurance.

Images

Click to enlarge.

© CREAM web site

Description of the payload or experiment

CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass)

Responsable institution: University of Maryland
Principal Investigator: Eun Suk Seo

An instrument 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.

The instrument consists of a sampling tungsten/scintillating-fiber calorimeter preceded by a graphite target with scintillating-fiber layers for trigger and track-reconstruction purposes, a transition radiation detector (TRD) for observing heavy nuclei, and a segmented timing-based particle-charge detector.

A key feature of the instrument is its ability to obtain simultaneous measurements of the energy and charge of a subset of nuclei by the complementary calorimeter and TRD techniques, thereby allowing in-flight inter-calibration of their energy scales.

Performance in flight and data obtained

This flight additionally to the gathering of scientific data, was a demonstration of the capabilities of the NASA Ultra-Long Duration Balloon (ULDB) support system.

This was the first Long Duration Balloon (LDB) mission to transmit a significant fraction of science and housekeeping data collected (up to 85 kbps) in near real-time through the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) via a high-gain antenna, as well as keeping an onboard data archive. CREAM was controlled through a line of sight (LOS) transmitter from pre-launch until it went over the horizon, about 12 hours post launch, at which point commanding was transferred off the continent to the Science Operations Center (SOC) at the University of Maryland and NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) Engineering Support Center (ESC). Primary command uplink was via TDRSS, with Iridium serving as backup when the primary link was unavailable due to schedule or zone of exclusion (ZOE) traverse.

One of the unique features of CREAM operation was the nearly continuous down-link in near-real-time of all high energy events, a significant fraction of heavy nucleus triggers, and a constant stream of housekeeping data throughout the flight. This allowed the CREAM team to respond to several occurrences as needed, by modifying the frequency of pedestal collection, tweaking trigger thresholds, etc.

External references and bibliographical sources

	CREAM web site University of Maryland
	Balloons in hunt for cosmic rays Article on CREAM from the Antarctic Sun magazine (PDF ~ 1.5 Mb)
	Beam test calibration of the balloon-borne imaging calorimeter for the CREAM experiment Proceedings of 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2005), Pune, India, August 3-10, 2005
	Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM): A Detector for Cosmic Rays near the Knee Proceedings of the 26th International Cosmic Ray Conference. August 17-25, 1999. Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
	Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass : Expected Performance Proceedings of the 27th International Cosmic Ray Conference. 07-15 August, 2001. Hamburg, Germany.
	Cosmic ray energetics and mass: configuration and progress on construction and testing Proceedings of the 27th International Cosmic Ray Conference. 07-15 August, 2001. Hamburg, Germany.
	CREAM for High Energy Composition Measurements Proceedings of the 28th International Cosmic Ray Conference. July 31-August 7, 2003. Trukuba, Japan.
	Design and Construction of the Silicon Charge Detector for the CREAM Mission Proceedings of the 28th International Cosmic Ray Conference. July 31-August 7, 2003. Trukuba, Japan.
	Flight Operations during the First CREAM Balloon Flight 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2005), Pune, India, August 3-10, 2005
	NASA Balloon Makes Record-Breaking Flight NASA press release
	Reconstruction of showers in the calorimeter during the first flight of the CREAM balloon experiment Proceedings of 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2005), Pune, India, August 3-10, 2005
	Record-setting balloon flight Article on CREAM's flight from the Antarctic Sun magazine (PDF ~ 1.5 Mb)
	The Record Breaking 42-day Balloon Flight of CREAM 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2005), Pune, India, August 3-10, 2005

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