News archive - July 2006
New COSMOCAM videos available (7/26/2006) The past week in the project's web site as well in the popular video site YouTube were published several video cuts of the short flight of the NASA's Ultra Long Duration Balloon prototype, wich was launched last June from Sweden. The images were obtained by CosmoCam a quite interesting project wich consists in a video camera system coupled with a interface allowing to control it throught the internet. Although at first glance seems to be a very common system for today's internet users, the amazing side of the device is his operation environment: mounted in one side of a gondola carried to the near space region by a stratospheric balloon. Next September, CosmoCam will fly again twice as part of the upcoming NASA balloon fall campaign from Furt Sumner, New Mexico. For more information on past flights and details of the device visit http://www.cosmocam.com/ ARCADE's launch from Texas (7/24/2006) Palestine, (Texas).- With a delay of few days, was finally launched in the evening (local time) on July 21th from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility at Palestine, the ARCADE instrument. The launch was acomplished without troubles and after a nominal ascent phase the balloon reached the float altitude of 122.200 ft and started a drift to the west of the state. After 7 hours of flight the separation command was sent and the gondola impacted ground 46 minutes later on a point located 40 miles SE of Fort Stockton, Texas. ARCADE is the acronym for Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission, an instrument wich measures the frequency spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), to search for signals from the first stars to form after the Big Bang. It is composed by two radiometers at 10 and 30 ghz mounted in a liquid helium dewar and was developed mainly by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center with the collaboration of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of California (Santa Barbara), and Brazil's Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE). The later in charge to develope the "horn" antennas for the radiometers. This was his fourth stratospheric trip, after a first engineering flight from Fort Sumner, Nuevo Mexico in 2001, followed by two scientific flights from Palestine on June 2003 and the recent one on July 2005. More information about ARCADE can be found in the GSFC's website at http://arcade.gsfc.nasa.gov/. The last balloon of the AMMA campaign landed today (7/15/2006) Cotonou, (Benin).- With the landing in Niger of the last balloon still in flight the AMMA balloon campaign have come to an end. The latest balloon was put airborne on July 11th at 11:35 utc, ending the launch phase of the campaign ongoing at the Cotonou Airport in Benin. The 15 balloons launched traversed a total distance of 25419 km in 63.4 days of flight, and managed to obtain 16.823 messages (measurements). This campaign was developed in the framework of a wider scientific effort started on november 2005 and called AMMA (African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis).
AMMA is an international project to improve the knowledge and understanding of the so called West African monsoon (WAM) and its variability with an emphasis on daily-to-interannual timescales. The effort is motivated by an interest in fundamental scientific issues and by the societal need for improved prediction of the WAM and its impacts on West African nations. As part of the french contribution to AMMA, the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD) with operational support of the Balloon Division of the french space agency CNES started at the beginning of June the launch campaign of small superpressure balloons from the Cotonou International Airport, in the Republic of Benin. The superpressure balloons used in this campaign keep a nearly constant volume and therefore fly at a quasi-constant density level, acting as very effective tracers of air parcels and also as meteorological platforms. Produced by ZODIAC under CNES supervision, balloons are inflated with helium. The envelope, made of three-laminated polyester of 125 micrometers, has a 2.5m diameter spherical shape. With a total mass of approximately 9kg, this vehicle can fly in layers between the surface and approximately 1.5 km. The instrumented gondola is contained inside the envelope and some sensors are placed in the balloon's skin. The campaign developed without troubles, althought an isolated incident wich took a suddenly widespread diffusion after one of the balloons landed in a remote village in the Jigawa state in Nigeria, causing a commotion in the people there. According to news item reproduced over the net by a pan-african news agency, "... the strange object dropped in the village around 5.00 pm local time after a slight rainfall, which caused apprehension and tension among inhabitants. The eyewitness account stated that the object which appeared to be remote controlled from an unknown centre attempted to take off again before it was tied down by the villagers who subsequently alerted the Emir of Dutse, Alhaji Muhammadu Nuhu Sanusi. (...) the sleepy village was to turned to a Mecca by the news of the strange object as crowd estimated at about 10,000 trooped there to catch a glimpse of the object. Following the development, the Police authority in Dutse sent a team of expert from Bomb Disposal Unit to ascertain the true picture of the object...". To get the complete history see the news item in the All Africa edition from June 26th and also on June 27th. In a few days StratoCat will publish the flight data sheets for these flights. Meanwhile you can obtain more information about the campaign and the balloons at http://www.lmd.ens.fr/ammabp/homepage.html TRACER lands safely in the north of Canada (7/13/2006)
Kiruna (Sweden).- As we informed in our update on July 11th, the northward path took yesterday by the last balloon of the 2006 transatlantic flight campaign launched on July 8th from the swedish base of ESRANGE, conducted to the decision taken to terminate the flight early than expected. Hanging under the balloon was TRACER (Transition Radiation Array for Cosmic Energetic Radiation) an instrument developed and operated by the Chicago University among other institutions to made studies of single element heavy cosmic ray nuclei. In the last hours of yesterday the balloon's course take it over Somerset Island, when at 17:00 utc was terminated, landing in a place located 75 nautic miles SSE of Resolute, Nunavut Province, Canada, thus avoiding a landing in the Arctic Ocean. A map showing the balloon location can be seen clicking here. The chase aircraft reported that the payload landed in an upright position and appeared to be in excellent condition. The recovery operations started at once due to the fact that from last may, the Columbia Scientific Balloon facility, had deployed a recovery team based on Victoria Island, waiting the arrive of the balloons. In the scientific side apparently the instrument collected data during ascent, and performed satisfactorily during the rest of the flight. This was the third flight of TRACER after the first one engineering test at Fort Sumner, New Mexico in 1999, and the first operational flight from Antarctica in 2003. If you want more information about the project please visit the TRACER's web site at http://tracer.uchicago.edu/. PEGASO ends his mission and achieves first ever arctic circumnavigation (7/4/2006)
The balloon was separated from the payload on July 1st at 23:06 utc, meanwhile fliying at a height of near 32.1 km. The landing of the craft ocurred 41 minutes later at coordinates 81º 28' North - 5º 24' West. As soon as possible the payload recovery will be done using an helicopter. The full circle achieved around the north pole paves the way for the upcoming year when more sophisticated and larger balloons and payloads will be flown following a similar pattern. The launch of the 10.000 m3 Raven balloon was acomplished at 14:56 utc from the Longyearbyen airport in the west coast of Svalbard near the north pole.
This yearly campaigns started in 2003, in the framework of a project for the development of a European long duration balloon program and research center in the northern polar region to mirror the Nasa's Antarctic long duration balloon program. The whole program has been funded by several international agencies (ASI, INGV, ARR, University of Rome La Sapienza) and has been proposed and endorsed in the framework of the International Polar Year 2007 activities, under the coordinated effort named ICESTAR. The scientists in charge of the project hopes that if all went well, in 2007 could be launched the first scientific flight of a heavy payload for a long duration balloon.. Two scientific instruments are candidates for this flight, both developed by Italian Universities and devoted to study the Cosmic Microwave Background: a microwave polarimeter called Bar-Sport and a submilimetric telescope called Olimpo. The new launch facilities to be stablished will be named as Nobile/Amundsen Stratospheric Balloon Centre honoring the bi-national team integrated by the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen and his Italian partner the explorer, pilot and engineer Umberto Nobile. Both departed from Svalbard aboard the NORGE blimp and after reaching the north pole on May 11, 1926 and although they had some weather and mechanical troubles, landed safely in Point Barrow, Alaska, on May 14. Balloon operations were managed by Steven Peterzen of ISTAR (International Science Technology And Research – Pagosa Springs, Colorado USA) under contract with the Italian Space Agency. The launch team was comprised of personnel from Andoya Rocket Range , INGV, University of Rome La Sapienza and University In Norway at Svalbard. For more information please write to: istars "at" earthlink.net Our thank's to Silvia Masi (G31 Experimental Cosmology Group, University of Rome "La Sapienza") and Steven Peterzen (ISTAR) by the information provided |
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The balloon has carried an Italian built payload Polar Explorer for Geomagnetism And other Scientific Observations (PEGASO) in the framework of the PNRA program (Antarctic Italian Program). This payload was constructed by the