NASA's annual long-term balloon event in Antarctica will begin on Dec. 1 with the launch of three science balloons from McMurdo Station in Antarctica. The balloons will support five missions, including the Gusto mission to map the Milky Way and other cosmic ray measurement and technical testing missions. The event takes advantage of Antarctica's summer conditions for long near-space flights.
NASA launched its annual Antarctic Long-Term Balloon Campaign around Dec. 1, which includes three scientific balloon flights planned for launch from the Long-Term Balloon (LDB) camp near McMurdo Station in Antarctica. NASA's stadium-sized, zero-pressure balloon will support a total of five missions in long-endurance flights, one of which will break NASA's record for a heavy-duty long-endurance balloon flight of 55 days, 1 hour and 34 minutes.
ANDREW Hamilton, director of NASA's Balloon Program Office (BPO)**, said:"The annual Antarctic Long Endurance Balloon Event is the flagship event of the program's Long Endurance mission. Ambient and stratospheric wind conditions provide a unique and valuable opportunity to fly missions for days or weeks on end in a near-space environment. The BPO team is excited to support all of our tasks this year. "
A scientific balloon payload is being prepared for launch at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. **NASA Walleps Flight Facility.
The Milky Way Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTA) mission is the highlight of this year's event. The astrophysics mission is managed by the Office of the Explorer Program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The mission was led by Christopher Walker, principal investigator at the University of Arizona, with support from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Gusto will fly over the Southern Hemisphere sky for more than 55 days to map much of the Milky Way, including the Milky Way's center and nearby Large Magellanic clouds. The GUSTO telescope is equipped with very sensitive carbon, oxygen and nitrogen emission line detectors. Measuring these emission lines will give the GUSTO team insight into the entire life cycle of the interstellar medium (cosmic matter between stars).
GUSTO's scientific observations will be made in Antarctica in order to have enough time for upper-air observations, proximity to astronomical objects, and solar energy provided by the polar regions in the summer.
NASA science balloon waiting for launch in McMurdo in Antarctica. Source**: NASA.
Other flight missions that will be carried out during the Antarctic LDB event include:
Antielectron Suborbital Payload (AESOP-LITE): The mission, led by a team from the University of Delaware and the University of California, Santa Cruz, will measure cosmic ray electrons and positrons. These electronic measurements will be compared to Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, which have reached interstellar space and measured cosmic ray electrons from 2012 and 2018, respectively. AESOP-Lite will fly on a 60 million cubic foot balloon, and the purpose of this test flight is to bring the balloon to an altitude of more than 150,000 feet, which is higher than NASA's current stratospheric stock.
Laura: This engineering test flight, led by NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, will use solar panels to extend the scientific capabilities of a manual launch platform from a few days of flight to a longer flight. Launching a balloon manually is 40 times larger than a heavy balloon, and the balloon has a limited amount of time in the air due to the number and weight of batteries used to power science and balloon instruments.
Anishala: This is a piggyback payload on the AESOP-Lite launched by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories to measure natural background sounds in the stratosphere over continents where human sound is largely absent.
The zero-pressure balloon is fitted with open pipes that allow the gas to escape and prevent the pressure inside the balloon from increasing. Gas expansion is due to an increase in temperature due to the heating of the balloon as it rises to the earth's surface or the sun rises. These balloons usually have a shorter flight time because of the gas loss caused by the cycle from day to night, so they can only be used for long flights during the summer months of the polar regions, where the balloon is in continuous daylight.
NASA's Walleps Flight Facility in Virginia manages the agency's scientific balloon flight program, which conducts 10 to 15 flights per year from launch sites around the world. Texas-based Perlaton operates NASA's Columbia Science Balloon Facility (CSBF), providing mission planning, engineering services, and field operations for NASA's Science Balloon Program. The Columbia Science Balloon Facility team has given out more than 1,700 science balloons in about 40 years of operation. NASA's balloons are manufactured by Aerostar. The NASA Science Balloon Program is funded by the Division of Astrophysics, Bureau of Scientific Missions, NASA Headquarters.