nasa high altitude balloon experiments

May 7, 2024

Meet HELIX, the High-Altitude Balloon That May Solve a Deep Cosmic Mystery

Every now and then, tiny particles of antimatter strike Earth from cosmic parts unknown. A new balloon-borne experiment launching this spring may at last find their source

By Rachel Berkowitz

An illustration of a high-altitude balloon afloat in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab/Michael Lentz

This spring NASA will launch what could become one of this decade’s most transformative missions in astrophysics. But you’ve almost certainly never heard of it—and it’s not even going to space. Dubbed the High-Energy Light Isotope eXperiment (HELIX), the mission seeks to solve a long-standing mystery about just how much antimatter there is in the universe and where it comes from—all from a lofty perch in Earth’s stratosphere, slung beneath a giant balloon set for long-duration flights above each of our planet’s desolate poles.

Led by Scott Wakely, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, HELIX is designed to study cosmic rays—subatomic particles that pelt our planet from the depths of interstellar and even intergalactic space . These particles include those of ordinary matter’s opposite-charge version , called antimatter. Scientists suspect the sources for the antimatter showering Earth from space could be almost anything , ranging from emissions by conventional astrophysical objects to the esoteric behavior of dark matter, the invisible stuff that seems to govern the large-scale behavior of galaxies. Figuring out which explanation is right may depend on a deceptively simple measurement: gauging how much time each of two specific particles spent hurtling through the galaxy. It’s like carbon-dating cosmic rays. “The models are all over the place. A measurement of this ratio is what everybody wants,” says Nahee Park, an astrophysicist at Queen’s University in Ontario and a member of the HELIX team.

Most cosmic rays are protons and light atomic nuclei that are thought to be accelerated by shock waves from supernova explosions within the galaxy. Others are produced when these nuclei collide with interstellar gas as they travel. But another particle—the antimatter counterpart of the electron, called the positron—presents a puzzle: observations since 2008 have repeatedly concluded that there are more positrons than can be explained by known phenomena. Astrophysicists have proposed models to explain where these particles came from and what interactions they encountered in the Milky Way. HELIX is designed to measure a parameter that could rule out some speculations about antimatter and cosmic-ray origins.

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Traditional models of the galaxy postulate a magnetized region, or “halo,” that extends beyond the Milky Way’s starry disk and influences cosmic-ray travel paths. But these models cannot easily account for observed antimatter levels. To bridge this gap, researchers posit an additional as-yet-unknown positron source lurking somewhere out there. One possibility is that dark matter is a sea of slowly moving heavy particles, and their annihilation or decay could be the source of the mysterious positron excess. Another is that the positrons could come from outbursts from undiscovered local pulsars—the rapidly rotating versions of stellar corpses called neutron stars—in our arm of the galaxy. An alternative explanation is that if particles spend more time within the halo, the observed antimatter flux can be caused by positron-producing collisions with interstellar gas, without the need for any additional astrophysical source. The crux of the debate lies in estimates of how long cosmic rays spend within the galaxy and predictions of which ones—and how many of them—find their way to Earth. These numbers, in turn, are proxies for the size of the galaxy’s halo, whose extent evades measurement using existing techniques. The halo’s size influences the detectable flux of positrons on Earth.

Cosmic-ray-propagation models start with the set of products created when atoms with heavier nuclei, such as carbon, crash into a proton or a helium nucleus. Such reactions can chip off part of the nucleus, resulting in lighter elements, such as beryllium. “When the starting gun goes off, you have some mix of [beryllium] isotopes,” says David Hanna, a physicist at McGill University and a member of the HELIX team, referring to beryllium varieties that have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. The mixture that reaches detectors on Earth, however, depends on how long the isotopes spend in transit and what happens to them on their way. Because one of the beryllium isotopes that the scientists are looking for is radioactive, it serves as a “cosmic clock” that traces the time spent in the galaxy from production to detection: While beryllium 9 ( 9 Be) is stable, beryllium 10 ( 10 Be) decays to half its original amount over 1.4 million years. Measuring the ratio of 10 Be to 9 Be thus gives a timescale of how much time cosmic rays spend in the galaxy.

Every Particle Counts

The HELIX team is preparing to measure the beryllium isotope ratio from 120,000 feet in the atmosphere during its first-ever flight, which will occur north of the Arctic Circle. The researchers’ goal is to count each high-energy particle that reaches the detector. HELIX will use a strong magnet to deflect each particle’s path and, from the curvature of its trajectory through the magnetic field, calculate its momentum. Another detector will measure the particles’ speed, allowing the team to determine each one’s mass and identity. The detectors have been specially designed for lightweight particles (that is, those with an atomic number below 10; beryllium’s atomic number is 4, for instance) with energies up to 10 giga-electron-volts per nucleon (GeV/n)—the amount of energy that a grain of sand would have falling from a centimeter height. But for a tiny atomic particle hurtling through space, that’s a huge amount of energy. The flux of these lightweight, high-energy particles is where competing models diverge in their predictions. “The measurements get harder and harder as you go to higher energies,” Park says. It’s a numbers game: Because fewer high-energy particles reach Earth, determining their flux is harder. And because their trajectory bends less, determining their momentum is harder, too.

To obtain maximum bending power—and therefore improved momentum resolution—HELIX uses a superconducting magnet. But this isn’t without its drawbacks. Superconductivity requires cryogenically cold temperatures; in Park’s words, superconducting magnets “drink liquid helium.” That makes them nonstarters for long-duration space missions, where replenishing the liquid helium is very costly or impossible—but the approach works well for balloon flights of days or weeks, where resupply is easier. The trade-off is that space-based experiments such as NASA’s Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) offer much longer observation times well above the bulk of Earth’s atmosphere, whereas HELIX and other balloon-borne stratospheric experiments have shorter observation windows, with their view somewhat muddied by our planet’s cosmic-ray-blocking air.

Seeking the best of both worlds, the original plan for AMS-02 had included a superconducting magnet, but it was replaced with a permanent one that requires no power—like a fridge-door magnet. This magnet allows for a longer duration but has a much weaker field. “We realized the weaker field provided a scientific opportunity for [beryllium] if we could find a superconducting magnet,” Wakely says. That realization led to the birth of HELIX.

HELIX uses the same superconducting magnet that the balloon-borne High-Energy Antimatter Telescope (HEAT) experiment carried in 2000. But the similarities end there. Every other element of the payload is brand-new and designed specifically for HELIX, allowing the experiment to distinguish between beryllium isotopes on a particle-by-particle basis. “We want to say, ‘This particle was [beryllium 9]; that one was [beryllium 10].’ That’s the thing that, as far as we know, nobody else can do right now,” Wakely says. Having that ratio of 10 Be to 9 Be could prove crucial for clarifying where cosmic antimatter comes from.

Carmelo Evoli, an astrophysicist at the Gran Sasso Science Institute in Italy, says that HELIX’s design “specificity sets it apart from large, multipurpose experiments like AMS-02.” AMS-02 measures the flux of particles across the energy spectrum, including the total amount of beryllium, with good precision. But it cannot distinguish between individual isotopes: their mass is too similar for the AMS-02 hardware to reliably discern them. Yet that experiment’s venerable age can be beneficial in other ways: “While HELIX is designed to have a better mass resolution, AMS-02 has already collected 12 years of data,” says Alberto Oliva, a senior physicist at AMS-02. This vast dataset should allow for differentiation between isotopes using statistical tools. But, Hanna says, “that’s nothing like seeing them separated. It’s like looking at two stars blurred together versus using a telescope that shows each one.”

In January HELIX passed its “hang test” at NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Tex., proving it could communicate with NASA data transmitters, antennas and other infrastructure that are crucial to the mission. It’s now ready for a weeks-long launch window from Kiruna, Sweden, that will open on May 15. The balloon will carry HELIX for roughly a week before it touches down somewhere in northern Canada. The team would be thrilled to bring home clean data that could differentiate the isotopes at the lower end of the targeted energy spectrum. But unforeseen effects, such as heavier-than-expected showers of other nonberyllium cosmic rays, could compromise the measurements. “Not quite getting the resolution you wanted would be painful,” Wakely says.

If everything goes as planned, the next step will be a two-week flight over Antarctica to collect enough data to measure particles with an energy of 3 GeV/n. “You need to be up high for as long as possible to get enough of these rare particles,” Park says. Eventually, with upgraded instruments, a 28-day flight could make measurements of beryllium isotopes at up to 10 GeV/n. Hopefully this will suffice to establish the critical transit time through the galaxy for these particles and a clue to their origin.

We’re lucky to have beryllium. Its lifetime is perfect for exploring the local galaxy: if it were 10 times longer, it would be good for exploring a larger region; if it were 10 times shorter, it would disappear too fast to reach us. “The HELIX mission emerges as a critical player” for helping to illuminate the mysteries of antimatter and all cosmic-ray behavior in the Milky Way, Evoli says. For the first time, an experiment is strategically poised to resolve the discrepancies between divergent predictions, offering unprecedented insights into the fundamental processes that govern cosmic-ray transport across the galaxy’s vast expanse.

But for now “we’re just hoping for a nice flight,” Wakely says.

NASA's Scientific Balloon Program

• Released Saturday, October 14, 2023
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NASA's Scientific Balloon Program OverviewComplete transcript available.Music Credit: “Enviro Tense” by Max Van Thun [GEMA] via Universal Production Music

Interview with Dr. Chris Yoder, Wallops Flight FacilityBalloon technologist Dr. Chris Yoder of Wallops Flight Facility discusses NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program with Heliophysics producer Joy Ng.Complete transcript available.

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Please give credit for this item to: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

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September 9, 2024

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NASA scientific balloon takes flight with student-built payloads

by Olivia F. Littleton, NASA

NASA's Scientific Balloon Program's fifth balloon mission of the 2024 fall campaign took flight Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, from the agency's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The HASP 1.0 (High-Altitude Student Platform) mission remained in flight over 11 hours before it safely touched down. Recovery is underway.

HASP is a partnership among the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium, the Astrophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, and the agency's Balloon Program Office and Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. The HASP platform supports up to 12 student-built payloads and is designed to flight test compact satellites, prototypes, and other small experiments. Since 2006, HASP has engaged more than 1,600 undergraduate and graduate students involved in the missions.

Teams participating in the 2024 HASP 1.0 flight included University of North Florida and University of North Dakota; Arizona State University; Louisiana State University; University of Colorado Boulder; College of the Canyons; Fort Lewis College; Capitol Technical College; University of Arizona; Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (Peru); and McMaster University (Canada).

A new, larger version of the High-Altitude Student Platform (HASP 2.0) had its engineering test flight a few days prior. HASP 2.0 will be able to accommodate twice as many student experiments as HASP 1.0 once operational in the next year.

The remaining three balloon flights scheduled for the 2024 Fort Sumner fall campaign await the next launch opportunities. To follow the missions, visit NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility website for real-time updates on balloons' altitudes and GPS locations during flight.

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NASA Mission Will Study the Cosmos With a Stratospheric Balloon

Carried by a balloon the size of a football stadium, ASTHROS will use a cutting-edge telescope to observe wavelengths of light that aren't visible from the ground.

Work has begun on an ambitious new mission that will carry a cutting-edge 8.4-foot (2.5-meter) telescope high into the stratosphere on a balloon. Tentatively planned to launch in December 2023 from Antarctica, ASTHROS (short for Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths) will spend about three weeks drifting on air currents above the icy southern continent and achieve several firsts along the way.

Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ASTHROS observes far-infrared light, or light with wavelengths much longer than what is visible to the human eye. To do that, ASTHROS will need to reach an altitude of about 130,000 feet (24.6 miles, or 40 kilometers) - roughly four times higher than commercial airliners fly. Though still well below the boundary of space (about 62 miles, or 100 kilometers, above Earth's surface), it will be high enough to observe light wavelengths blocked by Earth's atmosphere.

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The mission team recently put the finishing touches on the design for the observatory's payload, which includes its telescope (which captures the light), its science instrument, and such subsystems as the cooling and electronic systems. In early August, engineers at JPL will begin integration and testing of those subsystems to verify that they perform as expected.

While balloons might seem like antiquated technology, they offer NASA unique advantages over ground- or space-based missions. NASA's Scientific Balloon Program has been operating for 30 years at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It launches 10 to 15 missions a year from locations around the globe in support of experiments across all of NASA's science disciplines, as well as for technology development and education purposes. Balloon missions don't only have lower costs compared to space missions, they also have shorter times between early planning and deployment, which means they can accept the higher risks associated with using new or state-of-the-art technologies that haven't yet flown in space. These risks may come in the form of unknown technical or operational challenges that can impact a mission's science output. By working through these challenges, balloon missions can set the stage for future missions to reap the benefits of these new technologies.

"Balloon missions like ASTHROS are higher-risk than space missions but yield high-rewards at modest cost," said JPL engineer Jose Siles, project manager for ASTHROS. "With ASTHROS, we're aiming to do astrophysics observations that have never been attempted before. The mission will pave the way for future space missions by testing new technologies and providing training for the next generation of engineers and scientists."

Infrared Eyes in the Sky

ASTHROS will carry an instrument to measure the motion and speed of gas around newly-formed stars. During flight, the mission will study four main targets, including two star-forming regions in the Milky Way galaxy. It will also for the first time detect and map the presence of two specific types of nitrogen ions (atoms that have lost some electrons). These nitrogen ions can reveal places where winds from massive stars and supernova explosions have reshaped the gas clouds within these star-forming regions.

In a process known as stellar feedback, such violent outbursts can, over millions of years, disperse the surrounding material and impede star formation or halt it altogether. But stellar feedback can also cause material to clump together, accelerating star formation. Without this process, all the available gas and dust in galaxies like our own would have coalesced into stars long ago.

ASTHROS will make the first detailed 3D maps of the density, speed, and motion of gas in these regions to see how the newborn giants influence their placental material. By doing so, the team hopes to gain insight into how stellar feedback works and to provide new information to refine computer simulations of galaxy evolution.

The Carina Nebula , a star-forming region in the Milky Way galaxy, is among four science targets that scientists plan to observe with the ASTHROS high-altitude balloon mission. ASTHROS will study stellar feedback in this region, the process by which stars influence the formation of more stars in their environment.

A third target for ASTHROS will be the galaxy Messier 83. Observing signs of stellar feedback there will enable the ASTHROS team to gain deeper insight into its effect on different types of galaxies. "I think it's understood that stellar feedback is the main regulator of star formation throughout the universe's history," said JPL scientist Jorge Pineda, principal investigator of ASTHROS. "Computer simulations of galaxy evolution still can't quite replicate the reality that we see out in the cosmos. The nitrogen mapping that we'll do with ASTHROS has never been done before, and it will be exciting to see how that information helps make those models more accurate."

Finally, as its fourth target, ASTHROS will observe TW Hydrae, a young star surrounded by a wide disk of dust and gas where planets may be forming. With its unique capabilities, ASTHROS will measure the total mass of this protoplanetary disk and show how this mass is distributed throughout. These observations could potentially reveal places where the dust is clumping together to form planets. Learning more about protoplanetary disks could help astronomers understand how different types of planets form in young solar systems.

A Lofty Approach

To do all this, ASTHROS will need a big balloon: When fully inflated with helium, it will be about 400 feet (150 meters) wide, or about the size of a football stadium. A gondola beneath the balloon will carry the instrument and the lightweight telescope, which consists of an 8.4-foot (2.5-meter) dish antenna as well as a series of mirrors, lenses, and detectors designed and optimized to capture far-infrared light. Thanks to the dish, ASTHROS tied for the largest telescope to ever fly on a high-altitude balloon. During flight, scientists will be able to precisely control the direction that the telescope points and download the data in real-time using satellite links.

Your browser cannot play the provided video file(s).

This time-lapse video shows the launch of the Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory II (STO-2), a NASA astrophysics mission, from Antarctica in 2016. Such high-altitude balloon missions provide the opportunity to observe wavelengths of light that are blocked by Earth's atmosphere.

Because far-infrared instruments need to be kept very cold, many missions carry liquid helium to cool them. ASTHROS will instead rely on a cryocooler, which uses electricity (supplied by ASTHROS' solar panels) to keep the superconducting detectors close to minus 451.3 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 268.5 degrees Celsius) - a little above absolute zero, the coldest temperature matter can reach. The cryocooler weighs much less than the large liquid helium container that ASTHROS would need to keep its instrument cold for the entire mission. That means the payload is considerably lighter and the mission's lifetime is no longer limited by how much liquid helium is on board.

The team expects the balloon will complete two or three loops around the South Pole in about 21 to 28 days, carried by prevailing stratospheric winds. Once the science mission is complete, operators will send flight termination commands that separate the gondola, which is connected to a parachute, from the balloon. The parachute returns the gondola to the ground so that the telescope can be recovered and refurbished to fly again.

"We will launch ASTHROS to the edge of space from the most remote and harsh part of our planet," said Siles. "If you stop to think about it, it's really challenging, which makes it so exciting at the same time."

A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL manages the ASTHROS mission for the Astrophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. JPL is also building the mission payload. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland is developing the gondola and pointing systems. The 2.5-meter antenna unit is being built by Media Lario S.r.l. in Lecco, Italy. The payload cryocooler was developed by Lockheed Martin under NASA's Advanced Cryocooler Technology Development Program. NASA's Scientific Balloon Program and its Columbia Science Balloon Facility will provide the balloon and launch services. ASTHROS is scheduled to launch from McMurdo Station in Antarctica, which is managed by the National Science Foundation through the U.S. Antarctic Program. Other key partners include Arizona State University and the University of Miami.

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Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

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Cosmic Ray Balloon Instruments

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NASA scientists have flown several instruments on high-altitude balloons to study the origin of cosmic rays. The Balloon Experiment Superconducting Spectrometer ( BESS ), in partnership with the University of Tokyo, observes antimatter cosmic rays. The Cosmic Ray Energetic and Mass ( CREAM ) with University of Maryland, targets high-energy cosmic rays. And the Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder ( SuperTIGER ) with Washington University, focuses on cosmic ray elemental abundances.

Balloons Offer Near-Space Access for Space Biology Researchers

Balloons are often associated with meteorological studies—gauging weather conditions such as temperature, pressure and humidity in the Earth’s atmosphere. But for NASA and other scientists, they also serve as a stepping-stone for other critical space research.

More recently, biological sciences researchers have started using balloons as an experimentation platform. In the context of NASA’s planned Artemis and Mars missions, access to “near space” can advance scientists’ understanding of how biological organisms respond to extreme environments analogous to those found on the Moon and Mars. High-altitude and scientific balloons provide experimental access to various levels of rarefied air, as far up as the stratosphere (above 99% of the atmosphere). This enables researchers to gain initial data about the effects of higher levels of radiation and other factors on biological systems in a more cost-effective and timely manner than if they were to wait for an opportunity to run their experiments on the International Space Station or other orbital platforms.

Balloons come in many forms, ranging from the off-the-shelf models used by students and educators to scientific ones as large as a football stadium utilized by academic researchers and industry. This article will describe some of the ways that these balloons are helping to advance biological sciences research and support space exploration.

MOST UBIQUITOUS: SMALL METEOROLOGICAL BALLOONS

Small high-altitude balloons, also known as meteorological or weather balloons, are a low-cost, fast-track option for experiments that require frequent repetition. Often used by students and educators, missions are short-lived, lasting until the balloon bursts during ascent, which is typically one to four hours after being released. NASA also uses small high-altitude balloons as well. One key difference, however, is that NASA’s balloons, regardless of size, are made from polyethylene film whereas weather balloons are made of rubber.

Payloads are also small, up to 12 pounds suspended in two packages, and subject to landing wherever the wind may take them. Additionally, given that balloons are uncrewed, experiments must be designed in a way to run independently of human control and may be developed and flown in a matter of weeks using commercially available products and applications.

“With some basic knowledge about mission architecture and how to reliably recover a payload, balloon teams can do some really impactful work that would require more time and resources through traditional space-study flight opportunities,” says David J. Smith, director of the Aerobiology Lab at NASA’s Ames Research Center . “And it’s exciting to see the new ways that students are using them to study biological phenomena here on Earth as well.”

For example, in the summer of 2018, California wildfires were rampant. College interns with the Space Life Sciences Training Program (SLSTP) at NASA’s Ames Research Center saw an opportunity to study the effects of the wildfires on airborne microbiomes, such as bacteria, viruses and fungi.

One of the interns, Tristan Caro, now a doctoral candidate with the University of Colorado Boulder, drew inspiration from research findings he’d read about, published by Smith. “I came across something that I thought was really unique, which was people studying how microbes survive in the high atmosphere,” says Caro. “This seems very unintuitive because when you're flying on a plane, for example, you look out the window and there's just nothing, maybe there are some clouds below, but it's basically just void.”

Smith’s research had discovered intact bacterial spores and cells that had traveled from Asia across the Pacific Ocean to North American via dust plumes. “It got us thinking about the possibility that the smoke might be lofting microbes up into the air,” says Jordan McKaig, one of the interns and president of the student board of the American Society of Gravitational and Space Research (ASGSR). “We wanted to see if the microbes could survive the extreme conditions and possibly travel with the weather patterns.”

The team, therefore, set out to design the experiment and gather the materials necessary to build a payload. It required an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together life sciences, engineering and computer programming. “Success can depend on how you build your payload and what type of electronics you need to put on it,” continues Caro. “We chose an Arduino, which is a tiny, inexpensive computer you can buy online—it essentially taught me how to code, which has become a really valuable skill for my research.”

Once the team was ready, they notified the local Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of their launch plans. Although the payload didn’t exceed the threshold weight and technically didn’t require FAA clearance, the SLSTP team still followed protocol, as balloon trajectories are unpredictable.

There are other variables that can affect the outcome of a balloon experiment as well. With the SLSTP project, the first balloon landed in a 100-foot-tall redwood tree and wasn’t recoverable for weeks; a second balloon launched one week later was recovered but failed to collect samples. “Failure has to be an option,” continues McKaig. “If you're not making some mistakes with your science, you’re probably not taking enough risks. But because small balloons are relatively inexpensive and easy to do, you’re able to take more of them.”

In short, small meteorological balloons are a relatively easy and affordable way to conduct life-science experiments, further STEM education and excite rising generations of scientists. Whereas smaller meteorological balloons provide a valuable entry point for students and educators, larger scientific balloons provide the next level of experimental access for professional researchers.

Learn more: NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program

MOST RESEMBLING DEEP SPACE: NASA’S ANTARCTIC BALLOONS

Plants will play a crucial role in enabling space exploration by providing a sustainable source of nourishment for the crew as well as offer the psychological benefits that come with being in the proximity of greenery. Growing plants in space, however, will require a deeper understanding of how these living organisms respond to extreme environments, including radiation. That’s where NASA’s facility in Antarctica can offer researchers the most robust balloon research platform for preparing deep-space experiments. Support for the Antarctic campaign is provided by the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs.

“Not since the Apollo era have seeds made it outside of the Van Allen belts to sample radiation,” says Robert Ferl, distinguished professor and director of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida. “And it's been 50 years since we've studied the effects of that very real radiation on our biological systems. We can learn by putting plants in extreme environments that are more accessible to us, such as high altitudes at the magnetic pole in Antarctica, where the radiation is most analogous to Mars’. This prepares us to take humans and our biology off planet.”

“Plants are what will allow humans to travel past the capacity of a picnic basket,” adds Anna-Lisa Paul, research professor in horticultural sciences and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research at the University of Florida and NASA space biology research scientist. “So, when we leave Earth's orbit, we must take plants with us. Understanding how plants respond to spaceflight environments is the kind of thing that not only excites us as fundamental researchers, but also as people who want to see humanity take that next step in exploration.” Both Ferl and Paul are NASA-funded principal investigators in space biology research.

However, given the remoteness and logistical challenges of the Antarctic location, flight opportunities are scarce and highly competitive. Those who earn the privilege of flying on one of the Antarctic missions—typically one or two missions per year—also benefit from prolonged exposures to space-like conditions because of the way ionizing radiation spills into the Earth’s polar atmosphere.

Since the cold and radiation conditions afforded by the southern pole can provide valuable insights into how these microbes might behave in space, researchers also use the location to study extremophilic microbes—organisms such as spore-forming bacteria—and learn critical information about how spacecraft “stowaways” might affect the health of astronauts or planetary environments inadvertently encountered.

In addition to extreme cold, dryness and near-vacuum conditions at float, many other factors make missions launched from Antarctica unique and advantageous to researchers seeking space-like exposures. Firstly, there’s a consistent source of power. The summertime Antarctic sun doesn't dip below the horizon, so balloons equipped with solar panels get continuous power to their payloads, which can enable missions to last weeks, and even months.

Secondly, Antarctica’s stratospheric wind patterns offer a level of predictability for the balloon’s path. The jet stream reliably flows in a circle around the continent during the austral summer, so that when the helium-filled balloon goes up and starts to drift, it often circles back near the location from which it was launched around eight to 14 days later. This reduces the level of effort required to recover payloads landing on the Antarctic ice.

And thirdly, the radiation quality is different. The Earth’s magnetic fields around the planet allow for incoming solar and galactic radiation to funnel into the poles. This establishes radiation levels much closer to what would be encountered in deep space, so researchers are able to conduct experiments within “natural” environments rather than man-made settings.

The benefits are considerable, but the path to Antarctica can be long and complex. Payloads typically start their journey south in July, fly in December or January and begin the trip home in April or May. The nearly year-long process means that the experiments must be resilient enough to withstand long periods in a form of stasis.

Read more: Nineteen Miles Up, Experiment Reveals Earth Microbes’ Likely Fate on Mars

Balloons can be a valuable platform for biological researchers. For students and educators, smaller meteorological balloons offer an easy, cost-effective way for furthering STEM education. For professional biologists looking to measure how microbes or plant seeds respond to space conditions, larger scientific balloons enable robust radiation exposures. And for technologists hoping to eventually test payloads or instruments on the space station, larger balloons provide a coveted opportunity for quickly maturing hardware.

Stay informed on space biology & physical sciences research: Space Experiments

For daily updates, follow @ ISS_Research , Space Station Research and Technology News or our Facebook . Follow the ISS National Lab for information on its sponsored investigations. For opportunities to see the space station pass over your town, check out Spot the Station .

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Project Stargazer: The history and future of balloon-based astronomy

On the morning of December 13, 1962, a Navy astronomer and an Air Force captain stepped out of the New Mexico Sun and into a small steel capsule attached to a nearly 300-foot-tall mylar balloon. Inside was a small research telescope and a suite of custom instruments designed to study the cosmos. Their trip was the culmination of a years-long project, first started in 1957, that aimed to show that high-altitude balloons could be used to observe the cosmos, far from most of the interference of Earth’s twinkle-inducing atmosphere.

Over the course of the next 18.5 hours, the mission, called Project Stargazer, climbed to a staggering 82,000 feet (25 kilometers) in altitude and drifted above the desert. Only a handful of crewed balloon flights had ever reached greater heights. For the two men on board, William White and Joseph Kittinger, this was supposed to be just the beginning of a bright future for balloon-borne astronomy.

But despite their best efforts, Project Stargazer lost funding, leading to the cancellation of all but one of the mission’s four planned crewed flights. And ultimately, that single flight marked the end of a brief era of high-altitude, crewed balloon flights. 

You see, NASA and its fledgling Mercury Program had put John Glenn in orbit just six months before Stargazer’s flight. And by the early 1970s, balloon-based experiments had given astronomers enough confidence to start launching artificial satellites with telescopes and other instruments into low-Earth orbit. 

Yet, in just the past decade, high-altitude balloons have seen something of a renaissance — and this time, instead of humans at the helm, the flights are fully robotic. Results published earlier this year show that modern balloon-borne observatories are now approaching resolutions once only possible with orbiting observatories. That means balloons could soon give the same space telescopes that replaced them a run for their money.

Project Stargazer Takes Flight

Project Stargazer was a joint effort between the U.S. Navy, Air Force, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Begun just a year before the creation of NASA, the project’s engineers and scientists had to develop a way to mount a working telescope to the roof of a balloon’s gondola.

This was no easy feat. The telescope was exposed to the open air of Earth’s upper atmosphere. Plus, a balloon drifts, spins and tilts, meaning that engineers had to figure out how to stabilize and point the telescope while it was moving unpredictably. 

A few other efforts had already managed to successfully mount telescopes to balloons. These early balloon flights managed to image the Sun in unprecedented detail, as well as make high-resolution observations of the larger cosmos that were hard to get from ground-based telescopes. 

White was a veteran of one of these earlier efforts. He had served in the Air Force during World War II before going on to study astronomy at The Ohio State University. Soon afterward, he found himself working as a naval researcher on Project Strato-lab, which was being used to pioneer new experiments in the upper atmosphere and test the technology needed to keep humans alive at those altitudes. The Strato-Lab team was laying the groundwork for humanity’s move to orbit. 

White’s role on the project was to help develop scientific instruments that could be attached to the outside of the balloon gondola to measure radiation exposure — and the larger team’s efforts were successful. The data they gathered showed that astronauts would be subjected to high-energy particles from solar flares, which could harm their bodies. In fact, a version of the suits worn by the Strato-Lab pilots would ultimately be chosen for NASA’s Mercury astronauts. 

The final Strato-Lab flight came on May 4, 1961, when Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather ascended to 113,000 feet in an open-air gondola with a “temperature-control system” that amounted to a pair of Venetian blinds. Nonetheless, the mission was initially successful, providing the most intense test yet of the spacesuit prototype. But tragically, Prather drowned as the men were recovered from the gondola at sea. And unintentionally throwing salt on the wound, the next day, NASA launched the first American into space, Alan Sheppard, breaking the Ross and Prather’s briefly held record for highest U.S. altitude flight. 

Much like test pilots for aircraft at the time, test pilots for balloons likewise had incredibly dangerous jobs. Anyone who undertook the journey understood the risks. 

Previous balloon-borne efforts had focused on the Sun. But during the first crewed Project Stargazer flight, the men managed to point the telescope and track other distant stars. And afterward, the team felt they’d made a strong case for the future potential of balloon-borne observatories. However, during their second attempt in 1963, Stargazer’s balloon broke free from the gondola while it was still on the ground. The military cancelled the project’s funding shortly after. 

Meanwhile, over at NASA, the agency had already begun launching the first space-based observatories. These orbiting telescopes quickly proved capable of staying stable for many years with just a few thrusters and some gyroscopes. They also didn’t risk human lives. 

A Renaissance in Balloon-Borne Astronomy

In recent years, thanks to modern electronics and software, balloon flights for astronomical research have made a resounding comeback. New kinds of balloons guided by new navigation software are now able to stay afloat longer than ever before. And with no human on board, the instruments can keep observing for weeks and even months as the balloons are carried through Earth’s atmosphere by high-altitude winds. 

There, they float above all but a thin slice of Earth’s atmosphere, offering nearly space-like views of the stars and cosmos. These projects are proving that it’s possible to achieve results comparable to those of space telescopes at just a fraction of the time and cost. 

For example, in 2019, a balloon experiment called SuperBIT — the Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope — managed to take images with a resolution approaching that of the legendary Hubble Space Telescope, according to reporting by Science . And the team behind SuperBIT says they hope to launch an even bigger telescope next year, with plans to keep it aloft for months at a time. 

SuperBIT is far from alone, too. The past decade has seen balloon projects like: SuperTIGER, which studies cosmic-ray origins; BLAST, a floating telescope revealing interstellar dust and magnetic fields; and Spider, a balloon that observes the Cosmic Microwave Background in hopes of understanding the universe’s earliest moments. Each of these projects floats above Antarctica, where they can stay aloft for weeks or months. 

The longer these instruments can stay afloat, the more practical they become as rivals to space telescopes. NASA is also developing so-called super pressure balloons, which can serve extra-long stints above the clouds. The technology was first used by the Soviet Union in the 1980s to help keep a balloon afloat in Venus’ atmosphere. And in 2019, after years of advancement, NASA launched a pumpkin-shaped super pressure balloon the size of a sports stadium over Antarctica carrying the TRAVALB-2 experiment. It stayed in Earth’s atmosphere for almost 150 days.

Earlier this year, Loon — a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, that aims to offer internet services to rural area — managed to keep one of its super pressure balloons afloat in the stratosphere for 312 days as it circumnavigated the globe. And last week, in a paper published in the journal Nature, Loon revealed an experiment that saw one of its balloons guided by Google-developed artificial intelligence, which learns as it goes, similar to the program AlphaGo. The AI managed to select balloon routes far more efficiently than the existing human-designed algorithm, ultimately saving the craft valuable power. 

It’s a sign that even after more than a half-century of development, there’s still plenty of room for balloons to expand into their role: operating near the edge of space. 

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--> --> -->

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BALLOON Observations

NASA uses high altitude balloons to launch sensitive scientific payloads that observe the universe. These balloons make observations above most of the Earth’s obscuring atmosphere, making research into the full breadth of spectral wavelengths possible. For the 2017 eclipse, a number of balloon borne experiments will observe the sun and the moon’s umbral shadow on the Earth.

ECLIPSE BALLOONING PROJECT

Students will conduct high-altitude balloon flights from more than 50 locations across the 2017 total eclipse path, from Oregon to South Carolina, providing live videos and images from near space.

HIGH ALTITUDE BALLOON PROJECT

Are you interested in participating in a nation-wide network of total solar eclipse high-altitude balloon flights? Check out this exciting opportunity on stemoregon website and on facebook .

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• 04 January 2018

Scientific ballooning takes off

• Alexandra Witze

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Nature 553 , 135-136 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-00017-5

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Kyle helson finds excite-ment in exoplanet exploration, goddard digital team.

Almost a decade ago, then-grad student Kyle Helson contributed to early paperwork for NASA’s EXCITE mission. As a scientist at Goddard, Helson helped make this balloon-based telescope a reality: EXCITE launched successfully on Aug. 31.

Name: Kyle Helson Title: Assistant Research Scientist Organization: Observational Cosmology Lab (Code 665), via UMBC and the GESTAR II cooperative agreement with NASA Goddard

How did you know you wanted to work at NASA Goddard?

When I was finishing my physics Ph.D. at Brown University in 2016, I was talking to Ed Wollack and Dave Chuss at Goddard about the NASA postdoc program, and they suggested I apply. Luckily, I got the postdoc fellowship to come here to Goddard to work on cosmic microwave background detector testing and other related research.

I don’t think I would have realized or been interested in coming here had I not had that NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship when I was in grad school and gotten the opportunity to spend some time here and work with Ed and Dave.

What is the name of your team that you’re working with right now?

One of the projects I work on is the Exoplanet Climate Infrared TELescope (EXCITE) . EXCITE is a scientific balloon-borne telescope that is designed to measure the spectra of hot, Jupiter-like exoplanet atmospheres in near-infrared light.

• Related: NASA’s EXCITE Mission Prepared for Scientific Balloon Flight

What is your role for that?

I do a little bit of everything. During grad school, I worked on the first few iterations of the proposal for EXCITE back in 2015 and 2016.

Over the past few years here at Goddard, I’ve been responsible for parts of a lot of the different subsystems like the cryogenic receiver, the gondola, the electronics, and integration and testing of the whole payload.

Last year, we went to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, for an engineering flight. Unfortunately, we were not able to fly for weather reasons. We went back last month, and I was again part of the field deployment team. We take the whole instrument, break it down, carefully ship it all out to New Mexico, put it back together, test it, and get it ready for a flight.

What is most interesting to you about your role here at Goddard?

What I like about working on a project like EXCITE is that we get to kind of do a little bit of everything.

We’ve been able to see the experiment from concept and design to actually getting built, tested and hopefully flown and then subsequent data analysis after the flight. What I think is really fun is being able be with an experiment for the entire life cycle.

How do you help support Goddard’s mission?

We’re studying exoplanets, which definitely fits within the scientific mission of Goddard. We’re also a collaboration between Goddard other academic institutions, like Arizona State, like Brown University, Cornell, and several other places, and so we’re also members of the larger scientific research community beyond NASA.

We also have a number of graduate students working on EXCITE. Ballooning is a good platform for training students and young researchers to learn how to build and design instruments, do data analysis, etc. One of the missions of NASA and Goddard is to train early career scientists like graduate students and post docs, and balloons provide a good platform for that as well.

Balloon missions like EXCITE also provide a good platform for technology advancement and demonstration in preparation for future satellite missions.

How did you know cosmology was what you wanted to pursue?

When I was a kid, I loved space. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. I even went to space camp.

The first time I ever got to see physics was a middle-school science class. That was the first time we ever learned physics or astronomy that was deeper than just identifying planets or constellations. We started to learn how we could use math to measure or predict experiments.

When I was in college, I remember talking to my undergraduate academic adviser, Glenn Starkman, and talking about what research I might like to do over the summer between sophomore and junior year of college. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do or what I was interested in, and he suggested I talk to some of the professors doing astrophysics and cosmology research and see if they had space for me in their lab.

I ended up finding a great opportunity working in a research lab in college — so it was working in the physics department in Case Western. That’s where I first started learning about computer-aided design (CAD), and designing things in CAD, and that’s where I first learned how things get made in a machine shop, like on a mill, or a lathe. These skills have come in handy ever since, because I do a lot of design work in the lab. And I was lucky growing up that my dad was really hands-on and liked to fix things and build things and he taught me a lot of those skills as well.

Who has influenced you in your life?

My dad had a big influence. I think all the different people I’ve had the opportunity to learn from and work with who have been mentors along the way. My research advisers, professor John Ruhl in college, professor Greg Tucker in grad school, and Dr. Ed Wollack as a postdoc have all been very influential. Additionally, I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of very good post docs and research scientists during my career, Dr. Asad Aboobaker, Dr. Britt Reichborn-Kjennerud, Dr. Michele Limon, among others.

Throughout a career, there are tons of other people on the way from whom you pick up little things here and there that stick with you. You look back and you realize five years later you still do this one thing a certain way because someone helped you and taught you this skill or technique.

Where is a place you’d like to travel to?

Since I was lucky enough to go to Antarctica in graduate school, I figured that is the hardest continent to travel to, so now I have a mission to go to every continent. I’ve been to North America, I’ve been to South America, I’ve been to Asia, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand, but I’ve never been to Africa.

What are your hobbies, or what do you enjoy doing?

I’m a competitive track cyclist. I started racing bikes in collegiate racing as a grad student at Brown. Many summers I’ve spent many weekends driving and flying all over the U.S. to race in the biggest track cycling events in the country.

What would be your three-word-memoir?

Curious, compassionate, cat-dad.

By Tayler Gilmore NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md

Conversations With Goddard is a collection of Q&A profiles highlighting the breadth and depth of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s talented and diverse workforce. The Conversations have been published twice a month on average since May 2011. Read past editions on Goddard’s “Our People” webpage .

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