Leaving to go home!

I forgot to add this new pic! One of our guys took this photo of all us loading onto the C-130 to go home on Jan. 3, 2009.

ULDB Launched--Going Home Soon!

We launched our last flight yesterday (Sunday 28 Dec). This was a test flight of a new design of a super-pressure balloon. This is the largest super-pressure balloon ever launched and successfully floating. The normal balloons we launch are zero-pressure balloons meaning they have ducts that let the balloon vent as the sun warms the gas inside the balloon and causes the gas to expand. At night, or where there is 24 hours of daylight--when the sun is at it's lowest, the gas in the balloon cooled and the balloon sinks in altitude. The only way to counteract this is to fly ballast that you can drop to get the altitude back up. This isn't a big problem in Antarctica as not much ballast is needed since the balloon only drops about 10,000 feet when the sun dips. It is a bigger problem when we launch from a site that has sunset. You simply can't carry enough ballast to maintain nighttime altitude for more than 3 days. The answer to that problem is to fly a balloon that does not need to vent gas. That is a super-pressure balloon. It is built with special materials that make the balloon able to withstand the huge pressures inside the balloon. It will only vary 500-1000 feet in altitude overnight. It has taken a long time to come up with a design that works correctly. Hopefully this will be it. This will likely be my last entry. I will be leaving to go home in 3 or 4 days. The pics above are of the launch and a pic of the ULDB (Ultra Long Duration Balloon) balloon at float taken through a telescope.

Merry Christmas from The Ice

Christmas was actually yesterday here. One our CSBF guys took this group pic of us in front of our Delta transport at work..getting ready to go back in to McMurdo. That's me kneeling in front, second from the left.

Merry Christmas!

ANITA balloon at float through telescope

Mike from Aerostar (the manufacturer of the balloons we use) took these great picture of the balloon for the ANITA payload as it was going into float at 120,000 feet through a telescope. This gives you an idea of the size of the balloon at it's fully inflated volume. The 24 foot tall ANITA payload is dwarfed by the 29,470,000 cubic feet balloon.

ANITA launched! 21 Dec 2008

Saturday, we predicted light northwesterly winds for an 11AM Sunday launch of ANITA. We left McMurdo at 4:30AM Sunday morning and everything again went very smoothly and we launched the ANITA payload at 10:20AM this morning. It was another beautiful launch by our crew. The balloon took this 6,000 pound payload to 121,000 feet. This balloon is a little smaller. The total flight train length is 900 feet and the balloon's fully inflated volume in the stratosphere is 29,470,000 cubic feet. Here are some photos from today. By they way, that payload isn't the heaviest we launch but it is one of the tallest at 24 feet. CSBF is the only organization in the world that performs scientific balloon launches that can launch payloads this big (up to 8,000 pounds).

CREAM Launched ! 19 Dec 2008

The day before (Thursday) we had predicted light easterly winds up to 1000 feet for the CREAM launch and scheduled a launch for 11AM Friday. We left McMurdo at 3AM and everything went very smoothly and we launched at 10:30AM. In this photo you will see why we have to predict winds up to 1000 feet. It is 1000 feet from the bottom of the payload to the top of the balloon. Only 5% of the balloon is inflated with helium. It expands as it goes to float in the stratosphere. This balloon took this 6,000 pound payload to 127,000 feet. The balloon has a fully inflated volume of 40,000,000 cubic feet. You could fit the Louisiana Superdome inside the balloon. There is a video of the launch on the CREAM website:

http://cosmicray.umd.edu/cream/cream-flights/flight-2008.html

Inflation nearly complete:



Balloon released from the spool:



Payload released, collar released from balloon. The collar prevents the inflated portion of the balloon from sailing too much after release from the spool:

Didn't Launch Today

No pic today, but an update. The weather was a little worse than we expected today. It improved greatly by late morning, but not enough. We had expected surface winds late this morning (Saturday) of 3-5 knots (at these low speeds knots and mph are close to the same) and winds at 600 feet of 4-6 knots. Instead surface winds were 4-6 knots and 600 foot winds were 7-9 knots. That's just too much for this delicate system. We will attempt another launch Sunday afternoon. A similar pattern is expected, which means it will be close to being launchable weather.