News archive - November 2006
Confirmed: the SUMIT telescope was lost in the Atlantic Ocean (11/22/2006)
Cachoeira Paulista (Brazil) The doubts wich arised yesterday with the publication of a press release at INPE's web site, were confirmed today by Dr.Yasushi Ogasaka wich published a final update on his web log and also through a personal communication with StratoCat's author. So here is the accurately account of the entire flight. After waiting near ten days and with four launch date delays finally on November 19th was sent aloft the hard X-ray japanese telescope SUMIT, from the balloon base at Cachoeira Paulista in Sao Paulo state, Brazil. On the previous day, another launch was tried but the weather was not cooperative and the base was hit at noon by strong rain, wich forced to delay operations until the next day. Then on Sunday 19th, the weather conditions were also doubious but with a small window during the afternoon-evening wich may be will allow the launch. Taking account of the forecasted good wind perspective in the stratosphere the launch operations started in a race against the clock and the rain. Thus, as previously planned the big crane, went to the hangar and picked up the telescope at 14:30 local time and take it to the launch pad where arrived at 15:10. Near 16:00 the telescope was turned on preparing for the launch and 30 minutes later the balloon was extracted from the cointaining box, laid in the ground and started the inflation. This was the point of "no return" because the balloon once inflated would be launched or destroyed, it can be re-used. 
The hidrogen filling of the balloon lasted until 19:00 hs, when under a overcated sky the go signal was issued and the balloon released. It moved downwind forward to the crane holding the payload. When the balloon was almost vertical over it, the crane arm was moved along it to smooth the pick up shock and finally the payload was released, starting the ascent and soon clearing the cloud deck wich obscured the Sao Paulo sky. After the launch and during initial ascent phase, the ground team verified all systems were functioning well making observations of the radiation of the cosmic background. However the calm will no endure. As the balloon was near the float altitude, the base of Cachoeira Paulista suffered a power outage due to a very strong thunderstorm wich hit the zone. This provoked also to lost the telemetry link for science data. Took some time to restart the ground systems and to establish normal communications with the gondola, reasuming almost normal operations. However, the science telemetry did not recover until the latest portion of the flight. After operation had resumed, the science team started again the pointing of the telescope. At this time, the pointing telemetry was fine and they were able to confirm that SUMIT was tracking observation target, and also that instruments had been working fine during ascent. These were indications that the observation was being carried successfully, although until then the science data had not yet recovered. Followed an all night long flight without major problems and then the bad news: the winds at float turned unexpectedly in a suthern course so the balloon headed to the ocean. The balloon operations team tried to modify the ill fated course by changing altitude, but could not get it back so the flight was terminated above the Atlantic Ocean, so the payload was lost in the ocean. The last known coordinate of the payload was 43º 16' 2'' W and 24º4'00'' S in a sector 50 km from Restinga de Marambaia a narrow land strip in the ocean shore of the Rio de Janeiro state. To add a more tense twist, during this final phase of the flight, and just before termination the science telemetry returned and althought it was not "clear and loud" the science team enganged in a frantic race against the time to download all the observational data to try to save it before the sunking of the telescope. Apparently they succedeed and now, only rest to see if scientific data can be extracted from that. Today the scientific team will be departing Brazil in a 36 hour travel back to Japan. Preparing a new Bexus Campaign for the next year (11/12/2006) Kiruna (Sweden) A few days ago, we received a message from our swedish friend Jörgen Hedin (who participed in the student balloon project BEXUS this year) telling us that they ar back in business in Kiruna after the summer holidays and preparing the next year launch BEXUS 5. On September 29th was completed the presentation of the students project proposals for the flight. The list of experiments is as follows:
As pointed by Jörgen (this time acting as Student Project Manager) the launch date is set for March 2007 from the Swedish Space Corporation base near Kiruna. For more information on the project visit http://www.rex4bex5.spelaroll.se/ |
