US space agency Nasa is planning to set a record for the longest ever flight for a scientific balloon to be launched in New Zealand next month.
Nasa's Balloon Programme team was on the
cusp of expanding theenvelope in high-altitude, heavy-lift ballooning with
its super pressure balloon (SPB) technology, an agency statement said
on Friday.
Nasa experts are in the South
Island resort town of Wanaka, preparing for the fourth flight of
a 532,000-cubic-metre balloon with the goal of an ultra-long-duration
flight of up to 100 days, Xinhua news agency reported.
The launch of the pumpkin-shaped,
football stadium size balloon was scheduled for sometime after April
1.The SPB was made from almost 8 hectares of polyethylene film and would
ascend to a nearly constant float altitude of 33.5 km.
The balloon would travel eastward
carrying a 1,025 kg payload of tracking, communications and
scientific instruments, and was expected to circumnavigate the globe once
every one to three weeks, depending on wind speeds in the
stratosphere.The current SPB flight duration record is 54 days and was set in
2009.
Longer duration flights enabled longer
observations of scientific phenomena, the ability to survey more sources,
and more time to observe weak or subtle sources, while such
mid-latitude flights were essential for making observations at
night, a requirement for certain types of scientific investigations.
These two aspects combined with the
relatively low-cost of balloon missions could make the SPB a competitive
platform for a number of scientific investigations that would otherwise
need to launch into orbit.As the balloon travels around the Earth, it
might be visible from the ground - particularly at sunrise and sunset.
