Old balloon launch base, destroyed by the fire - 2/12/2008

Tolhuin, Argentina.- Around 20.30 last January 12, neighbors and occasional tourists visiting the vicinity of the northern shore of Lago Fagnano in the small town of Tolhuin, alerted the local authorities of the existence of a fire outbreak on the top floor of the building known as "the Eolo". They proceeded to give immediate notice to the local fire department who along with his peers of the Provincial Police, began the first tasks of extinction. The out of control fire was clearly fueled by large amounts of trash spreaded inside the ancient building. Despite the efforts of the deployed units, the fire began to gain ground rapidly, generating concern about the possibility that the fire would spread to the surrounding vegetation.

After several hours of continuous work, during which even joined firefighter units from neighboring towns, at around 2.30 am finally they were able to extinct the fire. The building resulted almost entirelly destroyed.

"... Gone a piece of the history of Tierra del Fuego ..." said one Tolhuin firefighter "... This building served us for our first practices, and was a breakthrough for the Province in terms of weather. Always attracted the attention of all those who visit our lake. We feel their loss, an announced loss ..." said the fireman to the local press.

Based on the testimony of eyewitnesses could be established that the fire was clearly intentional in origin, but until now is not clear the purpose. Some anonymous testimonies suggest the possibility that the disappearance of the building will pave the way in the near future to use the land for real estate ventures.

Days after the incident Ruben Zóffoli, director of the Provincial Civil Defense announced that the building will be demolished to prevent any kind of hazard to the people.

A bit of history

The EOLO of Fagnano was one of the three stations built in Argentina by the French Space Agency CNES under the umbrella of the EOLE project carried out with the National Commission on Space Research (CNIE) from Argentina. The other two were located at the airport in the Province of Neuquén and the Province of Mendoza Airport.

The building was a prefabricated structure, built under design of the French firm SONECTRO. Moreover, outside of the structure were installed four wind deflectors to facilitate launching. Fagnano station began operating in December 1971.

In total, the three-EOLO project bases in Argentina launched about 500 balloons, many of which lasted up to a year at float, allowing for the first time to obtain important information on wind regimes in the lower stratosphere of the southern hemisphere.

Once the project ended, the launch stations were under full administration of the Argentinian Air Force. In the case of the Tolhuin building, after several years began to be administered by the provincial government and later housed a NGO called "Return Journey" (devoted to combat drugs addiction) and later was used for practices by the Tolhuin volunteer firefighters.

The unfortunate loss of the building, left the Eolo Mendoza as the only remnant of that pioneering project.

Iamges ilustrating this article were obtained by personel of Aire Libre FM, a local radio station.

A new Balloon-borne telescope to image exoplanets - 2/3/2008

Austin, Texas.- A new project called "PLANETSCOPE" was presented last month at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas. It will use a balloon-borne telescope floating in the stratosphere to try to obtain a direct view of planets in other solar systems. If successful, the project would be able to obtain images of alien worlds impossible to see from the ground, and all for a fraction of what it would cost to do the same task from space.

"It's one of those ideas that actually has a remote chance of making it off the drawing board" says team leader Wesley Traub, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, US.

Astronomers have identified near 270 exoplanets orbiting distant stars. They were detected by indirect means and are too faint and too close to the stars they orbit to be imaged directly. Previous measurements have shown that light from distant stars remains relatively undisturbed while passing through the stratosphere, where turbulence is low.

To answer whether the air currents generated by a rising balloon, which is warmer than its surroundings, would spoil the incoming light of an exoplanet, in mid-2007, the group piggy-backed a small instrument called "PlanetScope Precursor Experiment" aboard the Solar Bolometric Imager gondola, launched from Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

While one beam passed though the surrounding thin air on its way to a reflector that jutted out 1 metre from the balloon's gondola, the adjacent reference beam travelled through an evacuated tube to the same reflector.

After comparing the reflected light from both beams, Traub and his colleagues concluded that distortions to the beam caused by the movement of air around the gondola were not serious enough to disrupt the image of a distant planet.

Traub envisions a telescope with a 1-to-2 metre mirror that would perform well enough to image approximately 20 exoplanets that lie relatively far away from the glare of their host stars. It will use a coronagraph, which blocks the light of a target star while allowing the light from surrounding planets to reach the camera. The camera would image through a variety of colour filters, which would provide clues to the atmospheric composition of any planets it sees.

"We'll be seeking funding for a balloon-borne coronagraph in 2008" said Traub. "If we come up with a good design, maybe we'll have a chance at this." Traub estimates the project, would cost $10 million dollars, roughly 1% the cost of a space-based planet imager. "It's the kind of thing that needs to be tried, because it's much cheaper than going to space".