The objective of the flight was to collect stratospheric air samples for greenhouse gas measurements.
The payload can be seen in the scheme at left. It was a compact cryogenic air sampler of relativelly new design which uses a cooling device called the Joule-Thomson (J-T) minicooler. The J-T minicooler can produce liquefied neon within 5 seconds from high pressure neon gas precooled by liquid nitrogen. The sampler employs liquid neon as a refrigerant to solidify or liquefy sampled atmospheric constituents.
The sampler is capable of collecting about 3 and more than 7 L STP of air at 25 and 120 hPa, respectively, which corresponds to about 25 and 15 km above ground within 240 seconds, respectively.
The balloon-borne sampling system, which was developed specially for Antarctic experiments, consists of the compact sampler, a 2-L high pressure neon gas cylinder, pneumatic and solenoid valves, a controller with a GPS receiver, a telemetry transmitter, and batteries.
The size of the sampling system is 300 mm width x 300 mm depth x 950 mm height and it weighs about 22 kg (including liquid nitrogen), allowing the use of relativelly small balloons (2000m3 to 9000 m3).
Balloon launched on: 1/4/2008
Launch site: Syowa Station, Antarctica
Balloon launched by: National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) / Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS)
Balloon manufacturer/size/composition: Zero Pressure Balloon
End of flight (L for landing time, W for last contact, otherwise termination time): 1/4/2008
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