Australian NASA launch campaign completed - 4/20/2011
Alice Springs, Australia.- The balloon launch campaign that was cancelled last year after the mishap that occured during a balloon launch, was completed today with the landing of the payload of the only mission launched from the Alice Springs airport in central Australia.
The payload onboard the balloon was HERO (High Energy Replicated Optics) an instrument developed by the Marshall Space Flight Center of NASA. It is aimed to obtain focused images of astronomical X-ray sources at hard X-ray energies using full-shell electroformed-nickel-replicated mirrors coated with iridium to enhance high-energy reflectivity. The scientific team along with staff from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility arrived to Australia in early March starting at once the integration process, both for the scientific instrument and for the launch crane, which after the aforementioned accident was fitted with a new launching head.
Once declared flight ready at the end of the month, they started a long wait for the right launch conditions as well an against-the-clock race to get the payload in the air before the impending "shutdown" of the US Government (which finally was avoided). Being HERO a NASA funded project the announced "halt" of all non-esential federal operations endangered the mission. The first launch attempt (shown in the picture) took place on April 8, but was abandoned due to adverse surface and low-level winds. Another two attempts were also cancelled due to wind in April 12 and 13. Finally the fourth attempt on April 18 was the succesful one. The balloon was released as mission 617N at 22:10 utc and after floating at 127.000 ft for 33 hours it was downed near Barcaldine, in Queensland a little bit after 7:00 utc on April 20.
According to the Australian press, the operations were carried out "under a veil of secrecy". Ravi Sood -Director of the launch base- explained that the launch details were kept secret because of the accident last year. "...This is why most people wouldn't have heard about it. It was a deliberate policy this time round to discourage spectators from attending because we wanted to emphasise the safety aspects of the launch. We also had roadblocks in place to ensure the safety of all concerned in Alice Springs was taken into account..."
A new flight of the ENRICHED campaign - 4/7/2011
Kiruna, Sweden.- The second flight of the complementary part of the ENRICHED scientific campaign took place on April 1st, from the stratospheric balloon launch base of the Swedish Space Agency outside Kiruna.
The balloon was launched at 16:30 local time and after a nominal ascent phase the balloon reached a float altitude of 24 km. Due to the southward high speed of the winds at the edge of the polar vortex, was necessary to start a valve controlled descent at a rate of about 4 meters by second. This made the balloon drift to the south of Finland. After a while the mission was terminated and the payload landed southeast of Rovaniemi.
This second mission carried onboard a multiinstrumented gondola called TWIN. It was developed jointly by several institutions and carried two German and three French instruments: the whole air sampler BONBON (Goethe Univeristy Frankfurt, Germany) that collects up to 15 air samples to be analysed after the flights in several European laboratories; HALOX-B which measures reactive chlorine species (Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany) while the University of Reims in cooperation with CNRS institute INSU -both from France- supplied two infrared spectrometers for high resolution measurements of CH4 and CO2.
The gondola was recovered undamaged and brought back safely to Kiruna on April 4, meanwhile a press release published at the CNRS/INSU website was making worldwide headlines. The article depicts in deep this year's situation on regard Ozone loss over the north pole, which already was adverted by the scientists of the ENRICHED campaign on last weeks.
First NASA launch from Texas since 2007 - 4/5/2011
Palestine, Texas.- After almost four years of not performing balloon launches the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility located in Palestine, Texas performed this week a flight to send to the stratosphere a payload developed by the Louisiana University at Lafayette which consisted in a small lightweight and robust probe to be used in atmospheric and cosmic ray measurements.
The hand launched flight (nomenclated 1596P) took place on April 1 at 12:30 utc and endured near three hours until termination which occured at 15:30 utc south of Castor, Louisiana. At right can be seen a map of the route followed by the craft.
As another landmark, this was the first balloon launched with a eastward flight path in the last 25 years. That kind of missions were very common until late 80's when NASA made the decision to eliminate flights traveling east of Palestine due to safety issues on payload and balloon recovery. The complete evolution of the facility from it's inseption to nowadays is available here in an article written for StratoCat by Dwight Bawcom.
Meanwhile, in the other side of the planet, in Alice Spring a launch team from CSBF are preparing a payload to be launched there during April. As you may remember, after the accident that almost destroyed the University of California's Nuclear Compton Telescope at launch, the last campaign in Australia was cancelled in April 2010 when still remained to be flown the HERO (High Energy Replicated Optics) telescope. The instrument was developed by scientists of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and is the first one aimed to obtain focused images of astronomical X-ray sources at hard X-ray energies.
Stay tuned!
Space activities in Japan affected by blackouts - 4/1/2011
Tokyo, Japan.- In a message published in March 29, at the website of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) the General Director Junijiro Odora, assured that various activities in ISAS have been affected by blackouts, after the massive earthquake and Tsunami that hit Japan on March 11.
After informing that all the staff and students in the Sagamihara campus were safe and have no injuries, and that there were only small damages in buildings and facilities, he assured that fortunately no damages have been found in the satellites and the spacecrafts under development there. According to Odora statement the sample of asteroid Itokawa which HAYABUSA spacecraft brought back to the Earth in June 2010 suffered no damage.
Althought the press release does not refer specifically to balloon missions, it mentions that most of the experiments and the ground tests related to space projects have been halted for the moment, trying to manage priorities on regard what experiments will be done in that limited power situation. In such scenario there are good chances that the upcoming spring balloon launch campaign at the Taiki base in Hokkaido, would be cancelled.
In another part of the message, Odora mentions that "...I have been shocked by news of devastating damages by tsunami in Ofunato where ISAS had launched more than 400 balloons from 1971 to 2007...". Efectivelly, one of the areas that received the worst hit of the tidal waves of the tsunami was the zone where was stablished the Sanriku Balloon Center. Although the former base was located in montanious terrain, it was very close to the ocean shore. No data is still available on regard the amount of damage that suffered the facility deactivated since 2007.
