Big move
Finally, after some meditation (a lot, really) I’ve decided to move the newsletter to a more friendly platform that the one offered by StratoCat.
It was not easy to make the move because I always like to have everything under my control due to my way to get things done. But, as a matter of fact, to be able to continue with this humble bulletin I needed to be free from some design issues I was becoming a little obsessive with. So, to focus on writing, the only wise way I’ve found to make it work was to move it elsewhere.
I hope the change will serve to easier the publishing process for Weekly Balloon News and at the same time honor the title of this humble newsletter. The move will also allow me to have a way to get your comments (please !), offer an easy way to subscription options, and many other amenities I surely will be discovering over time.
Recent balloon launches and landings
A lot of activity since the last real issue (the last one was entirely devoted to the Chinese balloon affair).
On February 21, we learned of a balloon flight made by the National Balloon Facility in Hyderabad, India. As usual, the confirmation of the flight came from the big headlines that the landing of the payload made on several websites across India. The balloon carried a far-infrared telescope for astronomical observations composed by a 1 meter diameter telescope (T100) developed by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) from India coupled with a Fabry Perot Spectrometer (FPS) developed by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) and Nagoya University from Japan.
The landing occurred n a paddy field in Nagarkurnool district, Telangana.
Back in the United States, Aerostar performed several missions with their Thunderhead balloons in the last weeks. The first launch of the period occurred on Feb. 1st from the undisclosed launch facility of the firm in Santa Fe County (NM). This balloon generated some confusion since it flew over the southern part of the country, at the same time that the eyes of the whole world followed the course of the Chinese spy balloon. This forced the popular website Flight Radar 24 to add a legend to its application.
After three days of flight the balloon entered the Atlantic Ocean and was last detected 220 km ESE of Savannah, Georgia. Its current status is unknown.
On Feb. 7 and Feb. 10, two short-duration missions were performed from the Aerostar Innovation Campus near Baltic (SD). Both balloons remained over Minnesota most of the time. The missions endured 64 and 45 hours respectively. A third mission was launched on Feb. 15 this time from a small airfield near Hurley (SD) which seems to be in some form related to the company as a flight operations site. The mission endured 63 hours and also ended in Minnesota.
The more recent launch of the company occurred on March 2 from the X-58 airfield near Indiantown, Florida. The balloon entered the Atlantic Ocean and was last seen 100 miles north of Turk and Caicos on March 3. The current status is also unknown.
Finally, Aerostar published a press release on March 7 remarking on the long-duration flight capabilities of their Thunderhead platforms. The piece highlighted the performance of HBAL614 which is still in flight off the coast of Africa and recently surpassed 100 days aloft. The balloon has been launched from New Mexico on December 11th, 2022.
Near Space Corporation, the Oregon balloon firm, performed on March 18 a balloon mission from the Madras Municipal Airport. Although I have no details on the nature of the payload involved, judging by the double trace of the ADS-B transponder, it probably was a drop mission of any kind. The payload could be a UAV or probably a flight test of a recovery capsule.
Finally to close this edition, World View Space, the Tucson-based balloon firm launched during March two missions of their Stratollite long-duration platform.
The first one (a short-duration mission) was performed on March 10 from Fabens Airport, El Paso metro area in Texas. The objective of the flight was to perform a first test as part of the agreement with Scepter a firm dedicated to the measurement of greenhouse gases and criteria air pollutants which were announced back in November 2022.
The second test was performed from Waimea-Kohala Airport on the Big Island of Hawaii on March 27. The balloon was part of Project Aether, an initiative carried out by World View and defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp. The Stratollite balloon will travel approximately 4,000 nautical miles, perform station-keeping demonstrations, and will safely land in the United States within 60 days of the launch. The purpose of the flight is to explore how to effectively operate in the stratosphere using high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned air systems.
The original flight plan called for two balloons to be flown within a launch window between March 23 and 25. As the weather was not so cooperative, the first flight slipped to March 27. Still is not clear if the second balloon will be performed and when.
What’s on in the field
On March 9, Thales Alenia Space announced the signing of a contract valued in 43 million Euros to create EuroHAPS (High-Altitude Platform Systems) demonstration project.
The initiative encompasses a consortium of 21 partners, and 18 subcontractors, from 11 countries and is aimed to develop several stratospheric demonstrators for missions designed to improve intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and communications capabilities.
The project will conduct flight demonstrations for three types of complementary stratospheric platforms:
A reduced-scale solar-powered airship called Stratobus designed for long-endurance missions and offering large payload capacity;
A Hybrid High Altitude Airship (HHAA or tactical HAPS) capable of generating extra lift with a wing airfoil ;
An Autonomous Stratospheric Balloon System (ASBaS) consisting of a series of three altitude-controllable balloons.
The Japanese startup Iwaya Giken presented recently the capsule which will be used to take passengers to the stratosphere under the company’s balloon-borne initiative. The small vehicle -which resembles the front cabin of a WWII-era B-29 bomber- is a two-seat pressurized capsule able to be lifted by a balloon to 23 kilometers.
The company announced also that on March 8, it conducted from a large-scale plantation in the town of Hokkaido, a manned flight test using a balloon developed in-house. The low-level flight ascended to an altitude of 1,190 meters and covered a distance of 16 km in 1 hour and 35 minutes.
Well, that’s all folks for the week. In upcoming issues I will incorporate the usual compilation of the latest additions and news from StratoCat. See you in a week.