Starting of the Second balloon launch campaign at Taiki - 8/31/2009
Hokkaido, Japan.- The launch of a 5000 m3 volume balloon performed by the Japanese Space Agency JAXA, on August 25 at their launch site located in the Multipurpose Air Park in Taiki, Hokkaido Island, marked the start of the second part of the annual scientific balloon campaign. The balloon, was released at 6:07 local time and after a nominal ascent phase under a climbing rate of 300 meters per second, it reached a float altitude of 24.7 km while flying 50 km east of the Taiki shoreline.
The balloon carried an experiment consisting of a capsule to be dropped from the stratosphere as part of a project that is studying the feasibility to use a flexible membrane to act as aeroshell to control the reentry of planetary vehicles. The development is a cooperative effort between the University of Tokyo, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Aoyama Gakuin University and JAXA and was also tested using a balloon twice, in 2003 and 2004.
The test model was released near 9:00 local time and after a succesfull deploy of the membrane structure it started a controlled descent, while registering key aerodinamic parameters as well pictures and a video. A few minutes after, the balloon was terminated and by 9:45 local time all items were recovered from the sea surface by a fishing vessel.
During the rest of the campaign are planned four more missions, one devoted to obtaining air samples at various altitudes, other one to drop test a model of a solar-sail, a flight test of a super pressure balloon in the framework of a long duration craft development project and the last to test the in flight behaviour of a gamma ray detector called CALET(Calorimetric Electron Telescope).
Stay tuned !
More balloon launches in the Arctic - 8/28/2009
Kiruna, Sweden.- Three more launches were carried out this week from the Swedish base of ESRANGE near Kiruna. The first one launched at 20:28 utc on August 24, was devoted to perform in-situ measurements of chemical compounds using a spectrometer called SPIRALE (Spectroscopie Infra-Rouge par Absorption de Laser Embarqué) composed by six tunable diode lasers. The launch was carried by CNES (French National Space Agency) balloon division, using the original method conceived more than 30 years ago known as the "auxilliary balloon method" and that is a registered mark of the French campaigns overseas. An image of such technique can be seen bellow. the image was taken by Bertrand Gaubicher (part of the ELHYSA team) during the SALOMON instrument launch.
After a nominal ascent phase the balloon reached the ceiling of 34 km and then was valved down to start a slow descent until 1:28 utc of the next day when was terminated. The gondola landed in a forest zone located 27 km SSE of Kiruna. This was the second flight of the instrument during the present campaign, after a first succesfull mission on August 7.
The second balloon was launched the next day at 14:55 utc and transported the SALOMON (Spectroscopie d'Absorption Lunaire pour l'Observation des Minoritaires Ozone et Nox) instrument developed by the Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement of the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique. It is a UV-Visible spectrometer dedicated to the measurement of the vertical distribution of O3, NO2, NO3, OClO, OBrO and of the extinction coefficient of aerosols beetween 15 and 40 kms. The mission had a duration of 7 hours, and the payload landed near the town of Nedre Soppero, 57 km NE from Kiruna.
Finally, the third and more recent flight took place on August 26 with the launch of the ELHYSA hygrometer on his second mission at Kiruna this year (the first one was the opening flight for the campaign, see bellow). The mission started at 15:00 utc and after a flight of near 4 hours the payload landed 8 km north of the small village of Knoksu.
All this activity occurs in the framework of the campaign denominated StraPolÉté (Stratosphère Polaire en Été or Polar Stratosphere in Summer) whose main objective is the study of the Arctic stratosphere in the summertime.
As occured in the previous flights the STAC instrument (devoted to perform in situ measurements of aerosols) was included as a "piggy back" payload on each of the three missions.
More Information:
:: http://strapolete.cnrs-orleans.fr/ Projet StraPolÉté website
First scientific flights of the StraPolété campaign - 8/18/2009
Kiruna, Sweden.- The balloon launch campaign denominated StraPolÉté (Stratosphère Polaire en Été or Polar Stratosphere in Summer) whose main goal is the study of the Arctic stratosphere in the summertime, is progressing at full steam. On August 18 was completed the third scientific mission (fourth of the campaign) with the succesfull launch of the MicroRADIBAL radiometer developed by the Laboratoire d'Optique Atmosphérique of the Lille University under a 35SF balloon of French manufacture. The launch took place at 13:21 utc and after a flight of near 7 hours at a mean altitude of 30 kms, the mission was terminated over Finland. The entire campaign is being carried out from the Swedish base of ESRANGE near Kiruna, under managment of CNES (French National Space Agency) balloon division.
The previous two flights took place on August 7 and 14 respectivelly. The first one started at 1:26 utc and after a duration of near 5 hours the payload was separated from the balloon and landed at 6:40 utc on coordinates 67.4 N / 19.8 E. That mission was devoted to transport the SPIRALE instrument, a spectrometer with six tunable diode lasers dedicated to in situ measurements of trace compounds in the upper troposphere and the stratosphere up to 35 km altitude which was developed by the French Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement. At right can be seen a beautiful image of the launch.
Seven days later took place the second mission this time transporting the LPMAA Fourier transform spectrometer, which was flown for the first time in the SWIR or shortwave infrared configuration. The balloon was launched at 9:26 utc and thanks to a carefully timing in the operations the float phase of the flight was performed in good space and time coincidence with an overpass at 12:59 utc of the Japanese GOSAT satellite which studies from space the abundances of CO2 in SWIR spectral region.
The balloon was terminated after seven hours at float and the payload landed whitout damage 30 minutes later. Impact point of the payload was located near the north border of the no fly zone of ESRANGE. A second flight of this same instrument (in solar occultation configuration) is planned to be performed near end of the month.
As planned the STAC instrument was installed onboard the gondola on each mission to perform in situ measurements of aerosols.
More Information:
:: http://strapolete.cnrs-orleans.fr/ Projet StraPolÉté website
StraPolété campaign started in the Arctic - 8/5/2009
Kiruna, Sweden.- In the frame of the scientific activities of the International Polar Year a balloon campaign started under managment of CNES (French National Space Agency) balloon division. The effort was named StraPolÉté (Stratosphère Polaire en Été or Polar Stratosphere in Summer) and as it's main goal is the study of the Arctic stratosphere in the summertime which remains largely unexplored compared to measurements performed during the polar winter to observe ozone depletion issues.
Former studies were mainly focused on the summer chemical ozone loss processes. However, several significant gaps remain regarding the knowledge of the dynamical state and of the compound content characterizing the polar summer stratosphere and about the ability of models to simulate properly the involved mechanisms.
The campaign's aproach to obtain the desired information lies in a carefully planned balloon flight strategy which will include flights of ultraviolet, visible and infrared, remote and in situ sensing spectrometers which will provide detailed information on vertical distributions of numerous valuable chemical tracers and reactive species, a set of in situ optical aerosol counters, an ultraviolet/visible remote spectrometer for the aerosol extinction and a photopolarimeter that will provide information on the nature and size distribution of the stratospheric aerosols.
On regard the operations the first flight was carried out on August 2 as can be seen in the image at right. The balloon was launched at 18:00 utc and after a flight of near 4 hours was terminated at 21:39 utc landing 30 minutes later in a zone located 20 km SW of Kiruna. The mission was the typical opening flight that CNES performs on every campaign start to test and adjust their systems with the addition of the hygrometer ELHYSA and the aerosol counter STAC on board.
The campaign counts with the participation of the Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et de l'Espace, Laboratoire d'Optique Atmosphérique, Laboratoire de Physique Moléculaire pour l'Atmosphère et l'Astrophysique, Laboratoire Atmosphère Milieux Observations Spatiales all them from France, the University of Heidelberg from Germany and the Norvegian Institute for Air Research.
As a complementary activity during Strapolete will be carried out three technological flights devoted to test in a real mission a new balloon flight termination panel and their associated systems. The system was developed entirelly by CNES and was already succesfully tested on the ground at the Aire Sur L'Adour base in France in 2008.
More Information:
:: http://strapolete.cnrs-orleans.fr/ Projet StraPolÉté website
