A technological flight to close the Autumn campaign (9/30/2006)

Fort Sumner, (New Mexico).- As final flight of the fall campaign, the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility launched on september 30th from the Fort Sumner airport a technological flight devoted to test a new balloon made of a material called Stratofilm SF-430.

The balloon near 39 millions cubic feet performed very well and after 5 hours was terminated landing 13 miles north of Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

This was not the first technological flight of the campaign since at the start of it on August 26th, another balloon was launched with similar objective. In that opportunity the flight was intended to test a balloon of near 26 million cubic feet made of Stratofilm SF-450 (see picture at left).

To see a complete report on the SF-430 flight click here and for the SF-450 test click here.

Premature end for the HERO telescope flight (9/25/2006)

Fort Sumner, (New Mexico).- On september 25th was launched from the Fort Sumner airport the NASA's X-Ray telescope HERO (High Energy Replicated Optics) wich is the first one aimed to obtain focused images of astronomical X-ray sources at hard X-ray energies (20–45 keV). The launch was succesfully achieved under calm wind at 14:00 utc with a stratosphericv balloon of a volume near 40 millions of cubic feet.

The flight seemed to develope as expected, but with the balloon not reaching the desired altitude. According to the track showed by the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility web site it never rose beyond 90.000 feet. A few hours after the launch, the video feed transmited Live from the gondola by a camera located in one of the sides of the telescope called COSMOCAM was fixed looking at the balloon, studying the balloon fabric and triying to locate any anomaly on it. A few hours later, the flight was terminated when the balloon was a few miles south of Fort Sumner. During the landing the telescope resulted with some damage, thus forcing to send it back to Hunstville, Alabama for repairs and preventing another try to fly it this year

That would be the fourth flight of the telescope, after a first engineering test in 2000 and other two flights entirely devoted to obtain scientific data in 2001 and 2005

The final flight path of the balloon and a complete report can be seen clicking here.

Prize for investigators of the BOOMERANG balloon mission (9/19/2006)

Lugano, (Italy).- Two researchers that led a scientific balloon mission in Antarctica have been awarded the 2006 Balzan Prize in Astrophysics. Andrew Lange, from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and Paolo de Bernardis, from the Universita di Roma La Sapienza in Rome, received the award from the International Balzan Foundation "for their contributions to cosmology, in particular the BOOMERANG Antarctic balloon experiment."

The "Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics" (BOOMERANG) mission launched in 1998 recorded the first resolved images of the early universe. The images reveal the structure that existed in the universe when it was a tiny fraction of its current age and 1,000 times smaller and hotter than it is today.

Detailed analysis of the images has been essential to understanding some of cosmology's outstanding mysteries, including the nature of the matter and energy that dominate intergalactic space and whether space is "curved" or "flat."

The BOOMERANG Project obtained the images using a telescope suspended from a balloon launched from McMurdo Station that circumnavigated Antarctica in late 1998. Here in StratoCat can be seen the flight sheets of the three flights of the telescope: from Palestine in 1997, and the two Antarctic flights in 1998 and 2003

For more information on the project, visit: http://oberon.roma1.infn.it/boomerang/ or http://cmb.phys.cwru.edu/boomerang/

Third launch from Fort Sumner: FIRST (9/19/2006)

Fort Sumner, (New Mexico).- The third balloon of the NASA's fall campaign was launched succesfully from the permanent base located at the Fort Sumner municipal airport, in the state of New Mexico, on September 18th. The balloon was launched near 15:00 UTC and was carrying an instrument called FIRST (Far-Infrared Spectroscopy of the Troposphere).

The goal of the FIRST project is to develop the technologies that will allow direct measurements of the infrared radiation leaving the Earth and its atmosphere at wavelengths longer than 15 micrometers out to as far as 100 micrometers. The portion of the infrared spectrum between 15 and 100 micrometers, which scientists refer to as the "far-infrared," has rarely been observed directly from space or from instruments on the ground or in aircraft. The instrument had also a first flight from the same place in 2005.

Although terminated over New Mexico, the balloon and the payload landed near the town of Adrian, in north Texas.

Postponed until December the USV drop test (9/7/2006)

Trapani, (Sicily).- According to the specialized web site Dedalo News based on information coming from sources in the Italian Space Agency (ASI) due to the adverse meteorological conditions the drop test over the sea of a model of the future Italian Space Shuttle known as USV was postponed until next December.

As you may remember, this vehicle called FTB1 (Flight Test Bed 1) was developed by Carlo Gavazzi Space on behalf of the Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali (CIRA).

The testing device without pilot and engine is 9.2 meters long and have a mass of 1,2 tonnes and is equipped with near 500 diffrent sensors as a "flying laboratory". Droped from a stratospheric balloon in free fall will help to understand the dynamic behaviour of transonic flight.

Now the flight will be carried on, from ASI's launch base in Trapani at the end of the year.

HASP landed safely in Arizona (9/4/2006)

Fort Sumner, (New Mexico).- The balloon launched on september 3th, from the NASA facility located at the Fort Sumner municipal airport, in the state of New Mexico, has been terminated after a 18 hour flight and the payload landed in Arizona, 42 miles north northwest of Flagstaff, near the Grand Canyon, with really minor damage. The final flight path, images and a complete report of the flight can be seen clicking here.

The 11 million cubic feet gas bag carried bellow an experience called HASP (High Altitude Student Platform) a special gondola designed to transport up to twelve student payloads to an altitude of about 36 kilometers with flight durations of 15 to 20 hours. These payloads are designed and built by students and will be used to flight-test compact satellites or prototypes and to fly other small experiments. HASP includes a standard mechanical, power and communication interface wich simplifies integration, allows the student payloads to be fully exercised, and minimizes platform development/operation costs.

The overall initiative have been funded by the state of Louisiana and the Louisiana Space Consortium, and received a strong support from the NASA through the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) wich agreed to fly HASP once a year until 2008. This year's flight will include 5 different experiences.

As part of this first HASP flight, also was part of the payload COSMOCAM, a quite interesting project wich consists in a video camera system coupled with a interface allowing to control it throught the internet and "Billy the Glider" an small airplane with a video system wich was deployed from HASP when the balloon hit the 30.000 ft of height. Sadly, due to a malfunction the glider was not able to send any images, and apparently landed in an unknown place west of the launch base.

To obtain more information on the programe please, visit the web site of the project at http://laspace.lsu.edu/hasp/index.html.

Stratospheric parachute jump delayed until 2007 (9/1/2006)

North Battleford, (Saskatchewan).-With a short message posted in his BLOG, Michel Fournier a french parachutist who planned to beat four world records (height, duration and speed in longest free fall and height for manned balloon) jumping from a gondola in the stratosphere, announced that his "Big Jump" will be postponed until the next years.

In Fournier's own words "...I will not be able to do it next september, for I did not completely reach my budget. Consequently, I am obliged to defer my attempt to the next window weather of 2007...".

Originally planned to be done on french soil, the jump moved to Canada four years ago and suffered two cancellations one in 2002 due to unsuitable weather and the other 2003 due to a tear developed on the balloon during the inflation.

The original plan of Fournier was to beat the unofficial freefall record wich still belongs to Col. Joseph Kittinger (1960) and the official one from the russian R. E. Andreyev.

More information about the project can be found in the Super Jump web site at http://www.thesuperjump.org/