Noted Caltech physicist dies at 52 - 1/27/2010

Pasadena, California.-Andrew Lange, a well known Professor of Physics at Caltech, died at the age of 52. According to the information published yesterday by Los Angeles Times apparently took his own life on last Friday. Housekeepers of an hotel in Pasadena where Lange checked in on Thursday, found him dead the next morning, apparently due to asphyxiation, said the Police.

Lange had been at Caltech since 1993. He graduated from Princeton University with his BA in 1980 and received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1987. He first came to the Institute as a visiting associate in 1993-94, was appointed a full professor in 1994, and was named the Goldberger Professor in 2001. In 2006 he was named a senior research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and in 2008 was appointed chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy.

The principal focus of Lange's research was the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) -a gas of thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang- that filled the entire universe. On this regard he was part of several balloon-borne experiments even before his stay at caltech. Recently he was principal investigator of the american segment of BOOMERANG, a CMB instrument built by a consortium of several Universities around the world (mainly from US and Italy) that in 1998 flew 10 days around the south pole. The mission made headlines in the scientific community after measuring CMB temperature anisotropies with high signal to noise ratio, determining that the geometry of the universe is "flat".

In 2006 he and his Italian partner on the BOOMERANG project Paolo de Bernardis , were awarded with the Balzan Prize in Astrophysics "for their contributions to cosmology, in particular the BOOMERANG Antarctic balloon experiment" and in 2009 he received the Dan David Prize on Past Astrophysics-History of the Universe, along again with Paolo de Bernardis, and Paul Richards.

More information:

:: Official note at Caltech Today information service
:: An interview with Andrew Lange at ESA website on regard the Boomerang project

Launched the first stratospheric balloon of the year - 1/25/2010

Kiruna, Sweden.-As occur each January, the first balloon of the year was launched from the ESRANGE base located near the town the Kiruna, in the Arctic Polar Circle. The mission started 1:46 local time (0:46 UTC) and after a nominal climbing phase the balloon (with a volume of 400.000 m3) started the levelled portion of the flight maintaining a height of 34 km. After near 14 hours of succesful scientific observations, the payload was separated from the balloon, when flying over Finland.

The gondola impacted the ground 40 km West of Kusamo in Eastern Finland, as can be seen in the image at left.

The balloon transported a gondola containing two instruments: MIPAS-B (Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding - Balloon) a balloon-borne version of an advanced Fourier Transform InfraRed (FTIR) spectrometer onboard the European satellite ENVISAT which allows precise limb emission sounding of chemical constituents related to the stratospheric ozone problem and to the greenhouse effect. Complementary, was present on the gondola TELIS (Terahertz and submillimeter LImbSounder) a helium-cooled three-channel heterodyne spectrometer developed at the DLR Remote Sensing Technology Institute. The present flight was a continuation of a similar mission performed in March 2009 to make time dependent measurement of trace gases and cloud properties in the upper troposphere and stratosphere with various remote sensing techniques inside the chemically activated vortex. Also was an objective to perform in-situ validation of Envisat data and coordinated flights with research aircraft that are being part of the Reconcile EU-FP7 arctic campaign at the Arena Arctica facility in the Kiruna airport.

The balloon opeartions were performed within the framework of the EuroLaunch co-operation between the Swedish Space Corporation in charge of Esrange and DLR/Moraba.

More information:

:: Home page of MIPAS-B at University of the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg website
:: Home page of TELIS at DLR website

Attempts to break Kittinger's record this year - 1/22/2010

New York City.-A few hours ago, in NBC's TODAY one of the most popular morning shows of the american TV, was presented a new attempt to break the record of the highest free-fall parachute jump hold since August 16, 1960 by then USAF Captain Joseph W. Kittinger Jr.

The surprise was the presence of Kittinger itself in the studio giving his backing to "Red Bull Stratos" the project being carried out by the Austrian extreme sportsman Felix Baumgartner. He plans to jump from a capsule hanging from a stratospheric balloon at 120.000 feet, wearing a full pressure suit, and from a yet undisclosed spot in the United States. Over the years, Kittinger was allways reluctant to support and even to be associated with the earlier attempts to break his record, specially on regard human safety issues.

As someone pointed in a ballooning specialized list a few hours ago, "...he must see something promising in the protocols of this attempt...". Bellow can be seen a video of the presentation.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the EXCELSIOR III jump, and accordingly, Kittinger is planning to celebrate it among other thinghs with the publication of an autobiography entitled "Come Up and Get Me" a phrase he replied by morse code to the ground control of the MANHIGH I mission when he was ordered to descend. The expression brought fear to her superiors about a possible change in behavior from lack of oxygen when in fact it was a humorous expression bordering on the morbid.

The book was wrote in collaboration with Craig Ryan, author of several books on the subject and is prologued by the first man to walk on the Moon: Neil Armstrong.

¿And what about the former efforts?

Lets see what occured with other similar projects in the past. They are ordered taking account of the closeness to the goal achieved.

Project Strato-Jump run by Nicholas Piantanida a truck driver and parachutist from New Jersey. He tried three times. The first on October 23, 1965 failed when a wind shear ripped off the top of his balloon and he had to bailout safely to ground. The second one on Febraury 2, 1966 also followed a similar fate when he reached 123,800 feet, but could not disconnect himself from oxygen tanks to jump. He was to be disconnected from the balloon via radio signal and landed with the gondola under parachute. The third and fatal one attempt was on May 1st of that same year. While he was ascending, his pressure suit failed suffering perhaps the most severe case of explosive decompression ever recorded. The accident leave him in coma until August 29, 1966 when he died at the age of 34 years old.

Le Grand Sault (the big jump in english) run by Michel Fournier a 66 years old, military parachutist and athlete. Originally planned to be done on French soil, the jump moved to Canada in 2002 when authorities refused to allow the jump. The project had three attempts. The first in 2002 when the weather forced to cancel the campaign and in 2003 when the balloon developed a tear during the inflation and became useless before complete the operation. The most recent try was also unsuccesful: when the pilot was seat in his capsule ready for take off, after releasing the balloon it moved to the crane which was holding the gondola but instead pick it up to the sky, it ascended alone without his cargo. The failure was traced to a "squib" which experienced an unexpected firing, setting the balloon free from the capsule. After that Fournier had to delay the launch several times due to budgetary issues. The next attempt was announced for next May.

QinetiQ 1 a project to send two pilots, Andy Elson and Colin Prescot wearing Sokol space suits to surpass the current record that Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather set in the Strato-Lab V mission in 1961. Althought it was not a jump mission it needed almost identical measures to assure the survival of the pilots in the near space environment. A first attempt in 2002 was cancelled due to adverse high altitude weather while the second try took place a year later off the coast of St Ives (United Kingdom) from a military ship. The launch morning while the balloon was being inflated, helium began to escape from the envelope through a tear along one of the seams forcing to halt the operations. After that setback the project never recovered and was finally cancelled.

Stratoquest run by the parachutist Cheryl Sterns. Still no attempt was made. After being very active promoting his project at the beginning of the 2000 decade, ultimatelly she retired from the "competence" althought she still is maintaining his effort alive.
According to his own words "she is ready to prepare her to safely meet this challenge but the most difficult aspect is funding...". No certain date of a probable first attempt.

Space Jump run by Steve Truglia a stuntman from England. He never set a certain date for his attempt. In 2008 while Fournier was near to achieve his goal, he stated on his website that he was ready to make it, but he will wait to know the altitude of the French's jump to go a little higher and beat him. After the Fournier failure he also remained silent and no mention was made again to any other attempt. Let's see if all the publicity around Baumgartner make him to set a when, where and how.

Surely this will be a great year for ballooning. Or at least we hope so.

CREAM terminated, BESS fully recovered and more - 1/20/2010

Near a month passed from our last update but as always in this month, little can be say about balloon activity on the world. Let's see a brief report on the current ongoings on the field as well what is expected for the rest of the year.

On regard the stratospheric balloon launch campaign carried out by NASA at Williams Field airport near the McMurdo station, the last balloon that was in flight at the time of our last update corresponding to the CREAM experiment (mission 605-N) was terminated on January 8 at 6:35 utc. The payload landed 42 minutes after separation in a point located 185 nautic miles SSE from McMurdo. Several hours after the landing the Iridium link was still active indicating that the gondola resting on ice was in good condition.

The total flight time for the fifth flight of CREAM was 37 days, 9 hours and 56 minutes, and according to our sources the flight was both an operational and science success, exceeding all expectations and minimum requirements. Althought the first mission to the landing site of the experiment was scheduled for January 9, a series of cancellations due to bad weather but at McMurdo and at the landing site prevented the scientific team to reach the gondola yet.

Another factor is that this time of year is very busy at the station as is starting the retrograde operations, so aircraft available is assigned to evacuate personnel from remote stations to McMurdo, having the hardware recovery the lowest priority.

On regard the recovery effort of the BESS instrument that was resting on ice near the drilling camp of WAIS Divide since 2007 (image at left), it has been succesfully completed. The payload was fully disassembled (including the big magnet) and returned to McMurdo for final shipment. The same occured with the staff involved that returned to the base the last weekend. The fully operation demanded three flights of the Bassler plane to Byrd Camp and from there an LC-130 that completed the task.

What's next ?

This is a brief resume of the upcoming launch activity for the rest of the year, as far as we are aware of.

:: January :: launch of MIPAS-B from ESRANGE in Kiruna, Sweden.

:: April :: starting of a long duration campaign of the NASA balloon program at Alice Springs in central Australia that will include launches of the NCT, HERO, INFOCUS, and TIGRE instruments. An scheduled SPB mission is in doubt after the recent failure of that same balloon at McMurdo. This will mark the return to the activity of the australian station after 7 years of inactivity and several improvements. We published recently a new page with the full history of the station.

:: April-June :: again at ESRANGE the French space agency (CNES) will carry out an extensive campaign involving up to 12 flights of balloons devoted to fly several scientific instruments and test systems and balloons. Sweden has become the main launch base for the French programme since their own facilities at Aire Sur L'Adour and Gap-Tallard are currently inactive as a result of an increment in the failure and safety requeriments. The greater population density, and the subsequent increasing of the air and ground traffic forced in june 2009 to halt all balloon flights in France until a whole new strategy for solving safety issues could be outlined. This include the development of new control systems to make precision landings feasible among other factors.

:: June :: another base to be reactivated will be the CSBF facility at Palestine, Texas which will host two missions including the fifth flight of the ARCADE instrument that in January 2009 made world headlines after the discovery of a strange radio signal in the cosmic background.

:: August :: back to ESRANGE in Kiruna, to see the launch of a pathfinder mission (a reduced version) of POGO-Lite, an instrument designed to measure the polarization of soft gamma rays. That same month in the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, at NASA's base of Fort Sumner, New Mexico will start the fall campaign that will include up to five launches. Some of the instruments involved will be CWAS, GRAPE and the JPL-OMS multi-instrumented gondola.

:: October :: as occur each year in ESRANGE near the Arctic circle, the BEXUS project will launch two balloons with multinational student payloads. This year is the turn of BEXUS 10 and BEXUS 11.

Pending of confirmation yet are the second flight of the USV unmanned italian space plane from Sardignia, a technological flight from Svalbard, the launch of the japanese FITE telescope from Cachoeira Paulista in Brazil, and several instruments that take part of the ISAS balloon launch campaign from Taiki, Japan in May and August.

And, by the way in September we will be celebrating our first five years online.

Stay tuned !