NASA balloon campaign completed - 10/20/2011
Fort Sumner, New Mexico The two balloon missions remaining to complete this year's stratospheric balloon launch campaign of the agency where carried out -not whitout incidents- in early October, at the Scientific Balloon Flight Facility, in Fort Sumner.
The first mission (627N) took place on October 7, from the north launch finger located just behind NASA's integration building. The balloon was released at 15:00 utc and after an ascent of near two hours it reached float altitude of 105.000 ft, developing a flighpath to the northeast.
The payload of this flight was an experiment called WASP (Wallops Arc Second Pointer), a cooperative effort being carried out since beginnings of the past decade between the Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate of the Goddard Space Flight Center and the Balloon Program Office, based on Wallops Station. The final aim of the project is to develop a balloon borne pointing system that can achieve sub-arc second stability of a balloon borne telescope viewing a celestial target.
After a total flight time of near 4 hours, the mission ended at 19:00 utc with the separation of the balloon and the payload, which landed 40 minutes later southeast of Dalhart, Texas.
Six days later was meant to be launched the last mission of the campaign (628NT) with the objective to make another test of the SF-490 balloon while also transporting a payload called SDS (Solar Disk Sextant) developed by NASA and Yale University aimed to measure the diameter of the Sun to a precision of several milli-arc-seconds. The balloon was laid out at the east launch area of the base in calm weather conditions, but once the inflation began the surface winds picked up.
Through the camera located in the roof of the highbay building was clearly visible the growing balloon's bubble moving back and forth in the launch spool.
The liberation of the spool was done at 13:44 utc. Once released, the balloon's bubble started a very fast run to the launch vehicle and in a few seconds surpassed it. Then it started to move very fast but the balloon bubble remained far ahead moving with the wind. Suddenly instead of rising the balloon -still attached to the launch vehicle- seemed to stop in the air without advancing and then started slowly to fell to ground.
Our first impression was that the balloon had developed a tear due to its "headbanging" in the launch spool but the truth is that following security procedures, the launch was aborted when the launch vehicle reached a predetermined security zone whitout having the possibility to safely release the payload.
The payload hanged undamaged from the launch arm and after a few minutes was lowered and taken back to the integration building. A few hours later the balloon -lying undisturbed in a side of the launch pad- was recovered by a truck surely to be taken to the local landfill.
The SDS mission -this time hanging under a conventional balloon- was renomenclated as 628N, and was carried out two days later. A total flight time of 5 hours at 123.000 ft was achieved without inconvenient from release to landing which occured south of Hollis, Oklahoma, thus closing a very succesful and fruitful launch campaign.
