Latest news
Second flight of the USV delayed (5/8/2008)
Tortoli-Arbatax, Sardinia Island.-
The second flight of the Italian Flying Laboratory developed by CIRA (Italian Aerospace Researches Centre) and already droped over the open sea from a stratospheric balloon in 2007 has been delayed until next October.
The launch campaign of the FTB 2 (Flying Test Bed 2) in the framework of the USV (Unmanned Space Vehicle) program, was opened last February with the arrival to the Tortolì-Arbatax airport of the second unmanned plane nicknamed "POLLUX" (picture).
 The ENAC - Ente Nazionale per l'Aviazione Civile (Italian Civil Aviation Authority) was forced to cancel one time the launch operations due to a combination of unsuitable weather issues, and the presence in the drop test landing zone of a international team performing drills in open sea, which would interfere with the normal development of the mission. Later other technical problems with the plane itself arose, adding more delays to the first launch window. A second window was opened in April 18. Two days later with good weather ahead, ENAC authorized to start a 72 hours count-down, setting the launch for the morning of April 23, but again the highly variable weather condition deteriorated, and after analizing the forecasts (which showed winds and sea in bad condition) the count-down was stalled at 4:00pm of April 21, just a day before the zero hour.
With only a few days available and taking account of the complex procedures for the count-down USV's program delegate at Torotoli airport Mr. Gennaro Russo, cancelled the launch operation re-scheduling it for the next weather window fixed for next October.
The first drop test was carried out with a twin vehicle nicknamed "Castor" on Febraury 2007. After a succesfull release the balloon situated over the open sea and droped the plane from 20.1 km of height. Unfortunately, during splash-down the vehicle has been damaged due to a failure of the parachute system first stage. Nevertheless, the mission target was completely achieved and a very significant bulk of information relevant to the flight was acquired. See our complete report for more information.
Thank you so much to Mr. Roberto Palumbo from CIRA by the information provided on this subject.
Another STRATOCAT's failure ;-) (5/7/2008)
Fort Sumner, New Mexico, (USA).- Yesterday, we informed about an apparently failed flight of the new ULDB (Ultra Long Duration balloon).
Well, thanks to Tom Steiner, who send us the official word on the subject we realized that we were totally wrong. The flight was not an ULDB flight neither failed. The 1.5 million cubic feet volume balloon was launched to simulate the ascent profile of Flight 580 NT which failed going into float at the beginning of the campaign.
According to the post flight report "...during ascent to float, ballast was dropped as required to satisfactorily simulate the ascent rate of Flight Number 580 NT. The balloon deployed normally, and successfully entered float without failure. After reaching float, the flight was successfully terminated using standard CSBF procedures for payload separation, and parachute cut away..." hence the short flight time.
Our sincere apologies by the mistake.
The current launch campaign of the NASA balloon program is being done from the Airport of Fort Sumner in the eastern side of New Mexico. Remember that NASA had improved the camera system located in the roof top of the high bay building there. The images now offered are of great sharpness and clarity, allowing to obtain detailed views of the field during launch operations and hang test of the payloads. The camera can be accesed on http://cam.balloonfacility.com
Uruguay, and a step in the stratosphere (5/2/2008)
Durazno, Uruguay.- Students and teachers of the Instituto de Ingeniería Eléctrica (Electrical Engineering Institute) of the Republic University (the public one) recently carried out a pioneering experience in the local scientific ballooning arena: they launched and succesfully recovered a stratospheric balloon. The flight took place on April 24, from the Santa Bernardina International Airport runway in the city of Durazno.
The payload consisted of temperature sensors (both internal and external), GPS module, telemetry and data system, radiotransmiter, antenna and a camcorder, transported under a expandable weather balloon of the 700 grs class. The balloon was released at 9:24 hs and meanwhile ascending started a flight path due east-Northeast.
For the tracking of the balloon from the ground a pair of high gain Yagi antennas in tandem were used coupled with a preamplifier of Single Side Band,and another three elements Yagi antenna for search and rescue signal tracking. Making just small adjustements to the antenna's orientation was possible to receive the telemetry from the balloon during all the flight until the balloon fell under the horizon.
Also several HAM's were able to listen to the balloon signals from far cities as Treinta y Tres or Colonia.
Althought the GPS system failed a few minutes before the launch and was not available trought the flight, the ground team was able to calculate the estimated landing zone, using the weather information provided by the Uruguayan Air Force and the calculation of the payload weight and balloon gross inflation. Once terminated the flight -after the burst of the balloon by expansion at maximum altitude- the payload fell back to Earth under the parachute 194 kms from the launch site, near Ney Bentancur's farm in a place called Quebrada de los Cuervos, in the Treinta y Tres Department. A phone call received the same day from the finder of the payload was the culmination of a historical day for the Uruguayan science and technique.
The film obtained -before the camcorder failed as a result of low temperatures- while the balloon was climbing to 14 km in height is of very good quality (below right) and the first of its kind in the country.
Speaking with "El PAIS" newspaper, Juan Pechiar -the project coordinator- explained that the work is part of a end-career thesis, based on an ambitious and "crazy" project, which may be real in four or five years: that Uruguay has its own satellite. "... Launching a balloon is a lot much cheaper than launching a satellite, but the problems are very similar: communication problems, working with low temperatures at 60 and 70 degrees below zero, to use little energy .. . But it is possible to release a balloon with a few hundred dollars, while sending a satellite would require much more than $ 100,000. To learn about the problems, a balloon is much more convenient...", explained Pechiar highlighting at the same time the educational character of the project, "...The spirit is to make a better engineering career, allowing to make things more interesting to students, encouraging their creativity with complicated problems, and promote interaction of a group with another" .
The launch of the balloon is the first phase of the so called "project LAI" to build a satellite. The project name's is not an acronym but the word used by the Charrua Indians (original inhabitants of Uruguay) to designate the stones used in their "boleadoras" a kind of weapon that was thrown to animals for hunting them. According to Pechiar numerous national and international institutions are interested in the use of balloons: "... the people who work in applied optics, at the Institute of Physics, Faculty of Engineering, wants to make spectrometry measurements and observe the atmosphere to detect its composition, the amount of methane, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, etc. " while from France, the Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, expressed interest in the experience of Uruguay. That institute examines the effects of cosmic radiation on electronic circuits "... that in land is not a problem, but in satellites and high altitude flights it is, making computers not functioning properly" . As a result, probably the second balloon to be launched by Pechair's team would carry a module manufactured jointly by both institutions to expose to the space radiation some state of the art electronic components.
Certainly an experience that not only demonstrates the potential of the balloon as an educational tool but also reinforces the concept of it as being "the satellite of the poor science man". Far from pejorative, an expression of the possibilities open to countries that suffer as Uruguay the lack of monetary resources but are full of wit, will and determination to achieve their goals.
More data on the flight and images of the launch and part of the videos obtained are available in spanish at http://iie.fing.edu.uy/twiki/bin/view.cgi/Satelite/GloboSat01Informe
Two more flights from New Mexico (4/22/2008)
Fort Sumner, New Mexico, (USA).- The current launch campaign of the NASA balloon program this year is progressing well. Two more launches were done the last week from the Airport of Fort Sumner in the eastern side of New Mexico.
The first flight (as 582NT) took place on April 13, when a 4.000.000 cu.ft. balloon was launched at 13:02 UTC. This was the final flight qualification mission for the Micro-Instrumentation Package (MIP) a compact telemetry system developed for use on lightweight balloon payloads, already launched during the campaign on a balloon that suffered a burst. This second flight of the MIP endured near six hours and ended 17 nautic miles southeast of Plainview, Texas. During the balloon cruise the MIP successfully performed all of the flight monitoring and commanding functions, with no problems noted and also performed both the flight termination and parachute separation.
The second flight on the past week (numbered 583 NT) was done on April 19 and involved a new balloon near 29.000.000 cuft made by Raven Inc. The balloon was released from the launch spool at 15.11 UTC and after an initial ascent nominal phase, reached the float altitude of 122.000 feet without troubles.
The mission was a qualification test of the Raven SF450-H polyethylene film for zero-pressure balloons made with Huntsman resin. After near 5 hours of flight, the craft went down 35 nautic miles northeast of Plainview, Texas. According to the post-flight report the balloon performance was within design parameters and specifications through the complete flight regime.
The rest of the campaign will be devoted to perform a test flight of a scaled down model of the Ultra Long Duration Balloon (ULDB) new design and the second flight of the Cosmic Ray Electron Synchrotron Telescope (CREST) build to study cosmic rays.
As can be seen from the screen capture above we must note that NASA had improved the camera system located in the roof top of the high bay building in Fort Sumner. The images now offered are of great sharpness and clarity, allowing to obtain detailed views of the field during launch operations and hang test of the payloads. The camera can be accesed on http://cam.balloonfacility.com
As allways we are in debt with our friend Tom Steiner who kindly provided us with fresh news on the subject.
First Swedish transatlantic flight this Summer from ESRANGE (4/16/2008)
Kiruna, Sweden.- Up to now the only balloons flown in transatlantic flight from the European Space Range near Kiruna, to Canada were launched and operated by NASA balloon program with a local logistical support. Now, for the first time in next June will be launched a mission carried out entirely by Swedish scientific institutions.
The stratospheric balloon will transport a mass spectrometer called P-BACE (Polar Balloon Atmospheric Composition Experiment) (see picture) intended to be a test mission to try out new technology in the framework of the MEAP (Mars Environment Analogue Platform) project. This is a joint effort of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF), the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) and the University of Bern in Switzerland and was developed to conduct a number of measurements on Mars during forthcoming missions. MEAP test will take place in the Earth’s stratosphere, an environment that has many similarities to the conditions at the surface of Mars.
Circumpolar flights during the winter, when the winds in the stratosphere blow from the West, have been performed from Kiruna for many years. Since 2005 the scientific community have the choice to perform during the summer months, these long duration flights but in the opposite direction. According to Dr.Olle Norberg, manager at Esrange, the ultimate goal is to obtain permission from Russia to overflight their territories to allow a full path around the pole in the future: "...circumpolar flights are in great demand by scientists from around the world (...) they want to perform longer measurements both during the summer and the winter. The opportunity to fly balloons right round the North Pole would in all likelihood greatly increase the number of balloon flights from Kiruna..."
Althought relluctantly, Russia often allowed the overflights of their territories, even by balloons launched by NASA, but the last of thease flights took place in 1997 and after that time no other permissions to repeat this kind of long duration flights was given. Maybe a faint echo of the pre-satellite cold war days, when the US Military used hundred of balloons to spy the territory of the formely Soviet Union.
NASA spring launch campaign is starting (4/4/2008)
Fort Sumner, New Mexico, (USA).- The second balloon of NASA's stratospheric balloon launch campaign was launched today at Fort Sumner airport under the guidance of the personnel of Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) whom moved early March from Palestine (TX), where is located the main launch base.
The mission numbered 581NT, started at 14.20 (UTC time) and lasted a little bit more than 5 hours. After crusing at 120.000 feet in an eastward path, the balloon crossed the Texas border where the payload was separated from the balloon at 19:45 (UTC time). The payload landed half an hour later near the town of Dimmitt.
Errata: Initially we assumed that this flight was intended to test a new compact telemetry system called MIP, but thanks to the information provided by our friend Tom Steiner we must confess that we were wrong. The mission was devoted to flight qualify the 29.000.000 cubic feet balloon design using the new Charter Films SF-430-B film extrusion
process and loading the balloon with a dummy payload weighting 6,000 pounds to test it at near maximum launch stress Index. According to the post flight report "...the balloon envelope deployment, ascent into float, and the float through solar noon were normal...". Thank you Tom!
As we mentioned above, last week took place the first MIP test flight -nomenclated as 580NT-. The balloon was launched on March 30 at 14:58 (UTC time) but after a nominal ascent phase and near to reach the float altitude, the balloon burst. An automatic onboard system detected the failure and terminated the flight at once. The payload landed in good shape near Hereford, Texas. Aside the balloon failure, apparently, the MIP testing objectives were met both in ascent and descent.
In short, the MIP stands for Micro-Instrumentation Package and is a telemetry system currently being developed by CSBF. It provide uplink and downlink communications, interface to the science experiment, housekeeping information including global positioning system (GPS) location of the balloon, and relays. The MIP central unit is composed of a microcontroller, an electronic unit with less power consumption, easily programmed, and cheaper than a microprocessor.
This will be an important campaign because among scientific instruments and new balloons to be flown, will take place a flight test of the renovated design of the ULDB (Ultra Long Duration balloon) which was succesfully indoor tested last year in a giant hangar in Weeksville (NC). Stay tuned!
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[ ¿How a balloon flight? ]
On June 6th we published on the site this article devoted to the discovery of the buoyancy principle by Arquimedes. The article is originally in spanish but have a link to made an automatic basic translation by Google.
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Flight Data Sheets
In our last updates we had included data sheets from the following instrument:
- LPMA spectrometer
- MIPAS-B spectrometer
- SAOZ spectrometer
- ELHYSA hygrometer
For a better access to
this information we created a page containing only those registries
with flight datasheets associated, divided by scientific interest area.
[ See all data sheets ]
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New information on launch bases
In our latest updates we had included the history of several launch bases:
 [ Svalbard Islands ]
 [ Uberaba ]
[ UFSM, Santa María ]
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 Exclusive Dossiers
A UFO that was not
21 years ago, in the
morning of September 17th, 1985, Buenos Aires, the capital city of
Argentine was shocked by the presence of a bright "UFO" in the sky.
Then and now a lot of investigators concluded that the object was "not
terrestrial", but now ,StratoCat presents an investigation that will
contribute to the final elucidation of the case. In this work, all the
details of the sighting are exposed as well as all the ambiguities,
myths and false interpretations and with the help of a rational and
objective perspective and a well documented evidence finally arrived at
the conclusion that it was a French stratospheric balloon
and not a UFO which appeared that morning over the city. The text of the
dossier is mainly in Spanish. Nevertheless, at the beginning of each
page there is a link that allows to obtain a basic translation of the
text to the english language.
[ Read More ]
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