Earlier this week, the US space
agency sent a high-pressure balloon skyward from Wanaka, New Zealand,
with inflated hopes that it will stay up there and circumnavigate the
globe for 100 days or more—a flight time that’s about twice the current
record. Along for the ride is the Compton Spectrometer and Imager
(COSI), a gamma-ray telescope developed by scientists at UC Berkeley.
Staying aloft for 100 days is a pretty big deal. Previous balloons relied on sunlight to keep the gas inside thermally expanded—hot enough to float. The problem with that is the sun goes down. There are work-arounds, like launching from Antarctica during its summer when the sunlight is constant, but infrastructure issues alone mean that the southernmost continent is never going to be the ideal place to set up shop.
It was reported that if you create a closed, pressurized system, the balloon isn’t
beholden to solar energy to give it lift, which gave NASA more launch
sites to choose from. If all goes well, the Wanaka flight will prove
that the super pressure balloon technology is capable of the consistent,
long-duration flights that scientific instruments need if they’re going
to collect meaningful data.
Balloons are cheap. Even really big balloons, filled with rarer-by-the-day helium. Way cheaper than a satellite. And balloons are easier to build, which, combined with low cost, makes them a great democratizer of space science. Plus, launching a balloon requires a lot less red tape than firing a rocket, shaving years off the prep time required for each mission
Staying aloft for 100 days is a pretty big deal. Previous balloons relied on sunlight to keep the gas inside thermally expanded—hot enough to float. The problem with that is the sun goes down. There are work-arounds, like launching from Antarctica during its summer when the sunlight is constant, but infrastructure issues alone mean that the southernmost continent is never going to be the ideal place to set up shop.
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| THE PICTURE SHOWING THE TESTED BALLOON.From MSN News |
Balloons are cheap. Even really big balloons, filled with rarer-by-the-day helium. Way cheaper than a satellite. And balloons are easier to build, which, combined with low cost, makes them a great democratizer of space science. Plus, launching a balloon requires a lot less red tape than firing a rocket, shaving years off the prep time required for each mission
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