Worldwide headlines highlights an Indian balloon mission - 3/17/2009
Hyderabad, India.- Titles ranging from "3 new bacteria species found in stratosphere" to the more spectcular "ISRO finds 'alien' life in upper atmosphere" populated the worldwide press since yesterday after the Indian Space Agency (ISRO) issued a press release in his website stating that "...Three new species of bacteria, which are not found on Earth and which are highly resistant to ultra-violet radiation, have been discovered in the upper stratosphere by Indian scientists. One of the new species has been named as Janibacter hoylei, after the Distinguished Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, the second as Bacillus isronensis recognising the contribution of ISRO in the balloon experiments which led to its discovery and the third as Bacillus aryabhata after India's celebrated ancient astronomer Aryabhata and also the first satellite of ISRO..."
The statement was talking about a balloon mission lunched from the National Balloon Facility in Hyderabad, on April 20, 2005. The experiment flown was a "Cryosampler" composed of a electromechanical device containing 16 sampling tubes prepared under sterile conditions to make sure that there is no terrestrial source of contamination. The high vacuum in the sampling tubes and the super-cooling provided by the liquid Neon bringed the device to extremely low temperatures of -270º C to enable collection of air samples in large quantity. Opening and closing of the valves that let the air samples to be taken are controlled remotely from ground.
As mentioned, the balloon (measuring 14 million cubic feet of volume) was lunched from Hyderabad at night and after a nominal ascent phase it managed to obtain samples at 24 km, 27 km, 30 km, 35 km, 40 km and 41 km. After the task was finished the tubes on the Cryosampler were sealed and it was separated from the main balloon. It descended under parchute near the town of Gulbarga, 250 km west of the launch base where a quick recovery was performed with the support of an Indian Air Force helicopter, three hours later.
Immediatelly after the flight the samples collected were transferred to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad and the National Centre for Cell Science, in Pune. Now, after 4 years of studies the Indian scintists spreaded the word about their findings.
According to ISRO sources, "...a total of 12 bacterial and six fungal colonies were detected in the samples obtained during the flight, nine of which, based on RNA gene sequence, showed greater than 98% similarity with reported known species on earth. Three bacterial colonies, namely, PVAS-1, B3 W22 and B8 W22 were, however, totally new species. All the three newly identified species had significantly higher UV resistance compared to their nearest phylogenetic neighbours..."
This kind of research is not new in India. By instance in 2001 a similar balloon mission was carried out under a balloon launched too from Hyderabad but even though that experiment also yielded positive results, it was decided to repeat it because doubts arose among the participants about the presence of contaminated samples. For the 2005 flight, extra care was taken to ensure that the Cryosampler was totally free from any terrestrial contamination.
Still is too early to assure if their findings are correct. Probably this will led to a more deep exmination of the evidence backing the disovery, or even more experiments of the same kind. If in the future, the evidence is positivelly confirmed we will have the first solid proof of the "Panspermia" hypothesis which assures that "seeds" of life exist already all over the Universe, that life on Earth may have originated through these "seeds", and that they may deliver or have delivered life to other habitable bodies.
More information:
:: Discovery of New Microorganisms in the Stratosphere at ISRO web site
:: 3 new bacteria species found in stratosphere THE HINDU web site
:: Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology "the" web site for first hand source for 'Panspermia' studies
Second balloon launch from ESRANGE - 3/11/2009
Kiruna, Sweden.- Following the succesfull mission of the TWIN sampler balloon launched yesterday, a second flight was carried out last night from the European Space Range located near Kiruna. This time the balloon was carrying an instrument called MIPAS-B2 (Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding - Balloonborne) consisting in an advanced Fourier Transform Infra Red (FTIR) to perform precise limb emission soundings of chemical constituents related to the stratospheric ozone problem and the greenhouse effect. Also in the gondola was included the 
TELIS (TeraHertz Limb Sounder) a new sub mm-wave limb sounder planned to be flown in the future with MIPAS-B. While the former instrument was developed by the Institut für Meteorologie und Klimaforschung, Universität Karlsruhe the later has been developed by a cooperative team including DLR-IMF Wessling from Germany with support from SRON in the Netherlands and RAL in UK.
The gondola was launched under a Zodiac balloon with a volume of 400.000 m3 at 23:18 utc on March 10 and after a perfect take off it ascended to the float altitude of 34.5 km during the first two and a half hours of flight. At right we can see a picture of the launch operations. The flight path took the craft south of Esrange and then east, entering in Finland as planned. Finally after 12 hours aloft the mission ended when the balloon was separated from the payload at 11:03 utc on March 11. The gondola landed east of the town of Anetjarvi.
With last night's flight, this first launch campaign at ESRANGE is completed. However, this year will be very active at the Swedish base taking account of the planned campaigns in the upcoming months. The first one will involve long duration Transatlantic flights with Canada as destination which will be carried out with NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. Later another cooperative effort will be carried out with the French Space Agency CNES launching near 9 big balloons during the STRAPOLETE campaign and finally two more launches under the BEXUS student program in September.
First balloon launching of the year - 3/10/2009
Kiruna, Sweden.- As occur each year, the European Space Range located near Kiruna, and managed by the Swedish Space Corporation, has been the first base in the world to succesfully launch a stratospheric balloon this year.
The balloon launched had a volume of 150.000 m3, and was built by Zodiac. It transported a gondola called TWIN consisting in a metal frame where is fixed an in-situ cryosampler called BONBON which is operated by the University of Frankfurt and is flown in the same gondola along with a HALOX-B chemical conversion resonance fluorescence detector measuring ClO/BrO, operated and developed by the Forschungszentrum Jühlich. As "piggy back" was also included onboard the so called "pico-SDLA" tunable diode laser water vapour instrument operated by France's CNR.
The launch took place at 4:21 UTC on March 10, from the ESRANGE launch pad using the "Hercules" vehicle to hold the gondola. After a nominal ascent phase, at 7:00 utc the balloon reached float level at 33,5 km starting a controlled descent allowing to take air samples and measurements at different levels. At that point the balloon was near the Finland border. Finally, when the balloon reached in his slow descent a height of 15 km, the flight was terminated. It was near 9:00 utc.
The payload landed 37 minutes later, near the town of Muodoslompolo, in Finland. At left we can see a map of the entire flight path.
The balloon was intended to be launched originally in middle January, but after near two weeks of preparations and when the payloads were all ready to flight, and several launch rehearsals were made, on January 29th decision was taken to halt the launch campaign waiting for the formation of the polar vortex over Esrange.
The scientific objective of the flights is to obtain measurements of stratospheric trace gases within the arctic stratospheric polar vortex as part of continuing research of ozone destruction and satellite validation.
