Comité Scientifique et Technique Ballon (CSTB)

The Comité Scientifique et Technique Ballon (french for Scientific and Technical Balloon Comitee) is an organization formed by European researchers and representatives from the Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers (INSU), within the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Centre National de Etudes Spatiales (CNES). It's main goal is to define and organize the French Research Balloon programme.

It was born as a result of a proposal made during the second "Earth and Space Sciences in Europe using Balloons" workshop held in Pau, France in September 2008, to implement a non binding coordination committee between the European operators so as to exchange information and coordinate activities, reenforce the interoperability of the hardware and harmonize the safety procedures.

The panel follows the evolution of the balloon program, analyses the funding issues and also evaluates the research proposals made by the scientific community to perform experiments. This evaluation is made with the scientific support of peer review committees in charge of assessing the proposals. One of the mandates of CSTB is to foster new balloon experiments that will benefit from the renewed balloon infrastructure of CNES.

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