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).