Jan. 08, 2009

J.D. Harrington
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-5241
j.d.harrington{at}nasa.gov

Betty Flowers
Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va.
757-824-1584
elizabeth.b.flowers{at}nasa.gov

Dana W. Cruikshank
National Science Foundation, Arlington, Va
703-292-8070
dcruiksh{at}nsf.gov

RELEASE: 09-003

NEW NASA BALLOON SUCCESSFULLY FLIGHT-TESTED OVER ANTARCTICA

WASHINGTON -- NASA and the National Science Foundation have
successfully launched and demonstrated a newly designed super
pressure balloon prototype that may enable a new era of high-altitude
scientific research. The super-pressure balloon ultimately will carry
large scientific experiments to the brink of space for 100 days or
more.

This seven-million-cubic-foot super-pressure balloon is the largest
single-cell, super-pressure, fully-sealed balloon ever flown. When
development ends, NASA will have a 22 million-cubic-foot balloon that
can carry a one-ton instrument to an altitude of more than 110,000
feet, which is three to four times higher than passenger planes fly.

"This flight test is a very important step forward in building a new
capability for scientific ballooning based on sound engineering and
operational development," said W. Vernon Jones, senior scientist for
suborbital research at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The team has
further work to do to enable the super pressure balloon to lift a
one-ton instrument to a float altitude of 110,000 feet, but the team
has demonstrated they are on the right path."

Ultra-long duration missions using the super pressure balloon cost
considerably less than a satellite and the scientific instruments
flown can be retrieved and launched again, making them ideal
very-high altitude research platforms.

The test flight was launched Dec. 28, 2008, from McMurdo Station,
which is the National Science Foundation's logistics hub in
Antarctica. The balloon reached a float altitude of more than 111,000
feet and continues to maintain it in its 11th day of flight. The
flight tested the durability and functionality of the scientific
balloon's unique pumpkin-shaped design and novel material. The
material is a special lightweight polyethylene film, about the
thickness of ordinary plastic food wrap.

"Our balloon development team is very proud of the tremendous success
of the test flight and is focused on continued development of this
new capability to fly balloons for months at a time in support of
scientific investigations," said David Pierce, chief of the Balloon
Program Office at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island,
Va. "The test flight has demonstrated that 100 day flights of large,
heavy payloads is a realistic goal."

In addition to the super pressure test flight, two additional
long-duration balloons have been launched from McMurdo during the
2008-2009 campaign. The University of Hawaii Manoa's Antarctic
Impulsive Transient Antenna launched Dec. 21, 2008, and is still
aloft. Its radio telescope is searching for indirect evidence of
extremely high-energy neutrino particles possibly coming from outside
our Milky Way galaxy.

The University of Maryland's Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass, or CREAM
IV, experiment launched Dec. 19, 2008, and landed Jan. 6, 2009. The
CREAM investigation was used to directly measure high energy
cosmic-ray particles arriving at Earth after originating from distant
supernova explosions elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy.

The super-pressure balloon was highlighted in the National Research
Council's decadal survey "Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New
Millennium," and will play an important role in providing inexpensive
access to the near-space environment for science and technology.

NASA and the National Science Foundation conduct an annual scientific
balloon campaign during the Antarctic summer. The National Science
Foundation manages the U.S. Antarctic Program and provides logistic
support for all U.S. scientific operations in Antarctica.

The Wallops Flight Facility is a division of NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Wallops manages NASA's scientific
balloon program for the Science Mission Directorate. Launch
operations are conducted by the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility
of Palestine, Texas, which is managed for NASA by the Physical
Science Laboratory of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

Track the balloons online at:

http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice0809.htm

For information about the NASA balloon program visit:

http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/code820

-end-
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32