OLIMPO PROJECT SYSTEMS TEST

The objective of the flight was to test several systems designed for the OLIMPO project. OLIMPO stands for Osservatorio nel Lontano Infrarosso Montato su Pallone Orientabile, (italian for Steerable Balloon-Borne Far-Infrared Observatory) and was an experiment devoted to perform cosmological and astrophysical surveys in the milimeter and sub-milimeter range developed by the Università di Roma La Sapienza and the Italian Space Agency with a extensive collaboration of universities and institutes from Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil and the United States. The experiment was launched in 2018 from Svalbard in an Arctic long duration balloon mission, towards Canada.

In advance of the 2018 long duration flight, a technological flight was performed in 2014 from Svalbard to test several systems to be used in the scientific flight. The payload of the balloon included an advanced on-board computer, the telemetry system Iridium-pilot modified for the operation in stratospheric balloons and a Raspberry PI module equipped with a camera module, taking one picture every 15 minutes and transmitting to the ground stations via the telemetry under test. The unit was powered by solar panels and batteries.

Balloon launched on: 8/17/2014
Launch site: Longyearbyen Airport, Svalbard, Norway  
Balloon launched by: ISTAR (International Science Technology And Research)
Balloon manufacturer/size/composition: Zero Pressure Balloon 35.000 m3
End of flight (L for landing time, W for last contact, otherwise termination time): 8/24/2014
Balloon flight duration (F: time at float only, otherwise total flight time in d:days / h:hours or m:minutes - ): 8 d

• A SPACE PROBE TO STUDY THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"
• Launch of the telemetry test payload La Sapienza website