World Balloon News #21
October 10th, 2023
Before going into matter I want to announce that I finally decided to give up with all the Twitter / X mess and will cease to publish on that social network any content. For all of you who followed me for so long there, the choice is to follow me on Mastodon a microblogging social network similar to Twitter but created and administered under the concept of “Fediverse” an ensemble of social networks, which, while independently hosted, can communicate with each other and are self-regulated. I will not try in these paragraphs to explain the concept but I will give you some useful illustrative links below.
The last changes introduced on Twitter / X were enough for me to take a decision I’ve been maturing since previous incidents on the blue-dead-bird social network. It is not easy to leave behind an audience of more than five thousand followers that took me more than 10 years to build up, but I’m really tired of contributing to a space that mistreats its users in every possible form.
Follow me in Mastodon at: https://mastodon.social/@Stratoballoon
- About the Fediverse [ Link1 ] [ Link2 ] [ Link3 ]
- 8 really good reasons to try Mastodon [ Link ]
- Mastodon is Rewinding the Clock on Social Media — in a Good Way [ Link ]
Now, let’s back to “business”. There was a lot going on in the ballooning field in the two months that passed since the last issue. Hold tight.
Full report on NASA balloon launch campaign in New Mexico
As occurs each year in the fall, NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility NASA carried out a balloon launch campaign (in fact the only campaign it hosts in US territory) at the Fort Sumner Municipal Airport in New Mexico.
The first flight took place on August 19. The aim of the mission was to perform a technology demonstration to validate several systems to be used in other experiments in balloon launch campaigns outside the US. An additional cargo flown as a mission of opportunity in this flight was the six payloads selected as FLOATing DRAGON Balloon Challenge Finalists. The initiative, sponsored by NASA's Wallops Flight Facility's Balloon Program Office (BPO) asks collegiate students to develop a concept and preliminary prototype for a system capable of delivering a data vault to the ground in a guided, safe manner.
Also was on board the module of the CUBES IN SPACE program: an international educational initiative for students aged 11 to 18 that teaches them how to design STEM -science, technology, engineering, and mathematics- experiments and provides a platform to conduct those experiments in near-space.
The inaugural flight of the campaign was conducted as mission 730NT and remained in flight for 5 hours.
The second flight was devoted to flying two experiments in the Gamma-Ray domain of astronomy. The main payload onboard mission 731N was GRAPE or Gamma-Ray Polarimeter Experiment an experiment designed at the University of New Hampshire to measure Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) polarization over the energy range of 50-500 keV.
The secondary payload was ComPair or Compton Pair a prototype of a telescope for future medium energy gamma-ray missions developed by a collaboration between NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the Naval Research Laboratory, the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Both instruments were launched on August 27 and flew for six and a half hours.
On September 1st. was conducted a special operation at Ft. Sumner known as the "Crew Chief Training". That involved the inflation of a 60 million cubic feet balloon (the largest in NASA’s inventory) that was not flown but merely released from the restraining spool and held moored with a dummy load.
The next completed flight of the campaign was mission 732N for the benefit of the HASP initiative.
HASP stands for High Altitude Student Platform and is a program aimed to stimulate the interest of students in an aerospace career path. In the framework of the program, a multi-instrumented platform was designed to carry up to twelve student payloads to an altitude of about 36 kilometers with flight durations of 15 to 20 hours using a small volume, zero-pressure balloon.
The program performed a balloon flight sponsored by NASA every year since 2006.
The 2023 flight included payloads developed by students from the Universities of Colorado, North Florida, McMaster, Gannon, College of the Canyons & Ft. Lewis College.
The 11 million cubic feet balloon was launched on September 7th and flew across New Mexico for 13 hours.
On September 25, was launched the FIREBALL-2 telescope, an instrument created to detect and map the radiation emission from the Intergalactic Medium. The UV telescope was developed by a cooperative effort between the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, and the Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) both from France.
The balloon was launched at 17:00 UTC as mission 733N and performed a slow ascent of about 5 hours to its float altitude of 125.000 ft which was reached near 22:00 UTC. All seemed OK with the flight until 23:00 UTC when the balloon started a steady descent that made it reach 80.000 ft at 3:19 UTC. At that moment was decided to separate the payload from the balloon. A few hours later NASA published an update on the failure:
"...The FIREBall-2 mission launched at 11 a.m. MDT Monday, Sept. 25, 2023, from Ft Sumner (NM) and ascended to a float altitude of 124,000 feet. After several hours at float, the balloon experienced an anomaly and began descending in altitude. The mission team safely terminated flight at 9:19 p.m. MDT west of Clovis, New Mexico, and NASA is in the process of recovering the payload and balloon. The cause of the anomaly will be investigated..."
The balloon was found in a private ranch in the Clovis area as we can see in the picture below
As sad as could be, this is not the first time that the FIREBALL team experienced a not-working balloon: back in 2018, another balloon that failed to reach the planned altitude prevented the team from obtaining scientific data from that flight. The story is pretty well pictured by Dr. Erika Hamden in a 2019 TED Talk.
So far, last balloon launched during the campaign was JPL-Remote a multi-instrumented upper atmosphere research experiment sponsored by NASA and run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California. The platform has been flown many times in different configurations and with multiple instrumentssince late 70's. It is part of an initiative to measure the abundance and altitude distribution of key chemical constituents in the upper atmosphere.
The balloon was launched as mission 734N at 14:23 utc on September 27. During the initial part of the ascent the ground tracking camera at Ft. Sumner base gave us a spectacular image of the balloon ascending next to an American Airlines jet bound for Dallas that crossed the scene unexpectedly.
The mission endured 15 hours aloft, ending its voyage on Deaf Smith County in the Texas Panhandle.
Funny enough, I’ve received via the contact form of StratoCat a message from the Sheriff’s Office saying that a crashed “weather balloon” has been found in the area (it’s not uncommon for me to receive messages on my website from people thinking I am who launch the balloons).
Two more flights were planned to complete the campaign: the engineering flight of the EXCITE telescope aimed to search for exoplanets and a small balloon launch carrying a technological experiment called TINMAN.
However, after the last attempt to launch the former on October 6, both flights were dropped from the flight manifesto, an indication that the campaign was called off for good.
Strato Sciences 2023 campaign completed in Canada
During the second half of August, the space agencies of Canada and France, -CSA and CNES, respectively- completed succesfuly the Stratosciences 2023 balloon launch campaign, which was the 6th scientific campaign since the inauguration of the Timmins Stratospheric Balloon Base in 2013. As I mentioned in the last edition of this newsletter the campaign kick-off was with the flight of the COMICS mission on August 8th.
The second flight was carried out on August 15 for a mission denominated BESAFE which transported several instruments: a particle collector of aerosols at different altitudes called STRATOPART developed by the Laboratoire Atmosphères, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS), BOLDAIR a micro-bolometer for determination of albedo and infrared flux of the Earth also developed by LATMOS, LOAC an optical particle counter and an optical spectrometer for the characterization of aerosols both developed at the Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et de l'Espace (LPC2E).
The flight endured about 12 hours with the payload landing in the Grassy River in Ontario.
Two days later was held at the base a public ribbon-cutting ceremony to inaugurate a new building added to the facility this season. The new payload integration hall will double the capacity of the French/Canadian program to welcome scientists from around the world. A delegation from the Brazilian Space Agency attended the event to tour the base.
“We’re here to learn about the Timmins experience,” said Rodrigo Leonardi, coordinator for satellites at the Brazilian Space Agency. “To learn about all the science we can get out of stratospheric balloons and also to see what kind of structures we would need to deploy in the future to make sure we can also invite this vibrant scientific community to Brazil.”
The third launch of the campaign took place on August 22. A Hemeria 400z balloon was used to transport several Canadian and French experiments. The main payload on board (which also named the flight) was HICIBAS, an acronym for High Contrast Imaging Balloon System a balloon-borne telescope developed at the Université Laval in Québec, whose main goal is to demonstrate the usability of high contrast imaging equipment on board a stratospheric balloon flight. Other experiments were also transported on this flight including RSOnar a technology demonstrator of a star tracker-like device to image resident space objects from the stratosphere (York University), HABLAN an experiment to picture a city at different viewing angles in the RGB bands (Cégep de Sherbrooke), TRASH a payload for recognition of space debris (Université Laval), BALLOONBUS a radiation detector (INP from France) and a balloon gondola position tracking experiment (Queen's University).
The balloon flew for little more than 5 hours landing 56 km west of Gogama, in Ontario.
The last balloon launch of the campaign was performed on August 27. The mission denominated Pre-TRANSAT was self-explanatory as it was aimed to test a series of subsystems to be used in a transatlantic balloon flight from Sweden to Canada to be carried out by CNES in 2024. Additionally, other experiments were also included in the gondola including SPECIES an instrument to measure a wide variety of trace gases simultaneously (LPC2E and LIPHY), CALASET a laser spectrometer for in-situ sensing of CO2 and N2O on the stratosphere (University of Toronto and University of Alberta), COMCUBE composed of several CubeSats, each containing a Compton telescope capable of measuring the polarization of gamma rays (Université Paris-Saclay) and two technological developments from CNES: L-SAT a new Iridium communication module and MEDOR a retractable renewable energy system, located below the gondola to power experiments during long-duration flights.
The 400z balloon remained aloft for more than 14 hours. Landing occurred 30 km WNW of the Timmins base.
The contents of this newsletter as well as the entire StratoCat website are free and available to all readers and will continue to be that way. I didn't even want to subject eventual visitors to the torture of advertisements. However, if you want, you can help to keep this project alive with just the amount of a cup of coffee.
NSC balloon is seen in the Portland metro area
Hundreds of inhabitants of the Willamette Valley and especially those of the Portland Metro area in the US state of Oregon were amazed by the presence in the sky of a shiny dot of light on the morning of September 6th. But as usual, the luminous presence had nothing to do with Aliens or Extraterrestrial life but with a more mundane and human activity: scientific ballooning.
In fact, that morning, Near Space Corporation (NSC), a balloon company based in Tillamook, had launched a stratospheric balloon from its base at the local airport known as the Johnson Near Space Center. The company that operates there and also had a launch facility at Madras Airport in Oregon launched the balloon at about 14:10 UTC.
As often occurs with other launches by the company, no information was given on the nature of the mission, however, due to the massive attention it gained, Kevin Tucker, president of NSC made a TV interview with KPTV station where he mentioned that the flight was intended to test some technologies that NASA will use for climatic research in Antarctica.
Based on the NOTAM issued before the flight, part of the purpose of the mission was to drop a payload from above 100,000 feet to the ground. The balloon flew for 5 hours. Pictures and trajectory maps are available at StratoCat.
Recent balloon launches performed by Aerostar
In the last edition, I mentioned some activity in southern California by Aerostar, the South Dakota-based balloon firm. Of the five balloons launched during August from Barstow-Daggett airport, only two remained in flight. At the moment of writing this, both balloons ended their mission: HBAL-648 was terminated on August 20th, in Temblor Range, 65 km W of Bakersfield, California while HBAL-649 moved further north and landed 60 km N of Great Falls, Montana the same day. Total flight time was 14 and 13 days respectively.
In late August, the firm returned to California to perform 4 more launches of long-duration Thunderhead balloons, this time from the Inyokern-Kern County Airport. The balloons with callsigns HBAL-654, HBAL-655, HBAL-656, and HBAL-657 were all launched on August 28th and flew between two and four days. A notable feature of these missions is that at some point in their flight, during some lapse, each one of the balloons remained overflying the restricted airspace of the Naval Air Warfare Center of China Lake.
On August 30th, another Thunderhead balloon was launched, this time from Hurley in South Dakota. The flight (with callsign HBAL-658) was performed under NASA's Flight Opportunities program as a demonstration test of the Stratospheric Optical Link Demonstration (SOLD) project carried out by the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific with essential support and collaboration from NASA's Ames Research Center. SOLD is designed to explore optical communications in the stratosphere and demonstrate the supporting capabilities needed to achieve such optical links while also overcoming the challenges of operating in the stratospheric environment.
During September the only launch activity performed by Aerostar was the launch of two more Thunderheads also from Hurley.
The first one, HBAL-659, was sent aloft on September 8 and spent in flight a little more than five days before landing near Byron, in New York state on September 13. The second one, HBAL-660 was launched on September 12 and ended its mission two days and nine hours later NE of Bucyrus, Ohio.
Below we can see the superimpossed flight tracks of both balloons.
Finally, I want to mention the extraordinary performance of HBAL-653 a thunderhead balloon launched from South Dakota on August 15 which is still in flight.
It made a typical southern excursion after being launched but then it performed an anticyclonic wide pattern crossing the midwest and entering Canada ending over the Atlantic Ocean off the Newfoundland coast. Days later appeared briefly close to the Azores Islands and then moved again towards the east coast. It’s not rare the presence of these balloons in the North Atlantic, I’ve have seen them before. However, this time their flight pattern coincided in space and time with the presence of major hurricanes in the area. Could it be that the observational goal of its flight?
So far, the balloon returned to appear on the grid in late September moving toward the coast of Portugal, and was last seen on September 29th, west of Madeira Island.
Third flight of the year for the SCEYE airship
SCEYE Inc. the New Mexico-based firm behind the development of a stratospheric airship for future communications use performed the third test flight of the year on August 16th. As occurred in July, the vehicle was launched from the company's facility located close to the North end of the 17/35 runway in the Roswell Air Center in New Mexico.
The flight endured three hours and the vehicle reached a maximum altitude of 56.000 ft. Landing occurred 46 km W of Artesia, New Mexico
The main objectives of the flight were to test the attitude and automated pressure control of the airship, beyond-line-of-sight command, and reliable launch and ascent. Furthermore, Sceye successfully evaluated three independent and redundant communication data links. All tests were performed at target altitude in the stratosphere. Multiple payloads were also flown on board including an infrasonic sensor, a portable optical particle spectrometer (POPS), a radiosonde, and a prototype aerosol study device.
Shorten-than-expected flight by World View for NASA
On August 16th, World View, the Tucson-based balloon firm performed a stratollite balloon mission from Page Municipal Airport in Arizona. The objective of GRYPHON-29 was to transport two payloads: a sensor module part of the ARMAS (Automated Radiation Measurements for Aerospace Safety) program developed by Space Environment Technologies (SET) that would measure multiple forms of radiation in the stratosphere. The second payload belonged to Arizona State University's CubeSounder program which in partnership with NASA's Flight Opportunities Program, would collect spectral measurements of the atmosphere.
Initially announced to be a multi-week mission the flight just endured 11 hours.
Regarding the short duration, World View stated
“…The mission was set to fly a minimum of 8 hours but could fly up to two weeks. The system was healthy and flying well when we brought it down…”.
A little more information was available from SET
“…The 300 ft. high balloon and vehicle assembly rose to 21 km altitude (~70,000 ft.) in about 2 hours. However, GRYPHON29 encountered westerly winds at its float altitude that presented an unforeseen flight safety issue. Therefore, the flight was terminated by WVE about 11 hours after launch although the planned mission was for 30 days…”
The paragraph I marked in bold letters in SET’s statement could give some indication that the problem was that the balloon was directed toward the restricted airspace of the Nevada military ranges located NW of Las Vegas as we can see in the map below.
Probably they lacked enough room to maneuver the balloon to safely avoid the no-fly zone and were forced to bring it down early.
BEXUS flights performed at ESRANGE
In September, after one year of absence, students from several Universities in Europe gathered at the European Space Range (ESRANGE) to perform two missions of the BEXUS initiative. The BEXUS program, sponsored by the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA), ESA, and the German Space Agency (DLR) allows university students to participate in a full near-space project in a relatively short time launching each year, two stratospheric balloons carrying the experiments that the students prepared.
This year’s missions -performed the same week that saw 15” of snow in the area, the most recorded so early in the season since 1905- included the presence in the center of 63 students.
BEXUS 33 balloon was the first mission launched at 3:41 UTC on September 21 carrying experiments from teams from Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, University of Porto, Portugal, and Warsaw University of Technology in Poland.
Three days later, the second mission BEXUS 32 was carried out transporting experiments from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain, Hautes Ecoles Spécialisées Genève, Switzerland, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy and the Technical University of Munich, Germany
This time, the balloon was released at 6:08 UTC reaching a float altitude of 26,7 km.
Both platforms were recovered shortly after landing.
In Brief
Space Perspective, the Florida-based company planning to offer balloon-based tourist flights starting in 2024, held a cutting ribbon ceremony for their brand-new 700 feet-long balloon manufacturing facility in the Titusville Airport on Aug. 22.
The place has been named after Loren Seely a former manager at the Raven/Aerostar plant in Sulphur Springs and truly a legend in the balloon manufacturing circles. [ Link ]
The same week that the UK Ministry of Defence announced the starting of the second phase of Project Aether, World View Space, the Tucson-based balloon firm informed that an operative team will be deployed to an undisclosed location off the continental US to perform operations for Sierra Nevada Corporation which for instance is one of the competitors of the UK MoD project along with Airbus subsidiary AALTO. Aether’s goal is to develop an unmanned stratospheric ultra-persistent communication and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capability. [ Link ]
Near the closing of this edition, I learned that the UK-based company B2Space launched a stratospheric balloon from the military airport of Virgen del Camino in León, Spain. I had no time to write the flight report of the mission for StratoCat as I was rushing to publish this newsletter. I will cover the flight in full detail in the next edition (that will not take two months to appear, I promise). [ Link ]
