NASA successfully launched a high-tech super pressure balloon that is considered record-breaking as it goes around-the-world for a test flight. This aims to provide "inexpensive access to the near-space environment for science and technology research," The Financial Express reported.
The balloon was launched from Wanaka Airport in New Zealand on Tuesday local time and it was moving at an altitude of over 108,000 feet in Australia. It has a capacity of over 18 million cubic feet and it carries the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) gamma ray telescope and microphones.
Carolina Infrasound instrument provided a small, 3-kilogramme payload in the balloon with infrasound microphones that are designed to record acoustic wave field activity from the stratosphere.
The purpose of the mission is to test and validate the super pressure balloon (SPB) technology as it moves over 100 days on air since the longest time that a balloon like this stayed aloft is just 54 days, Fox News reported.
After two hours and eight minutes of lift-off, the balloon reached an altitude of 33.5 kilometres flying a trajectory westward through southern Australia. It is estimated by NASA that the balloon will circumnavigate the earth on the mid-latitudes of the southern hemisphere once every one to three weeks with its speed depending on wind speeds.
Said launch is the beginning of COSI's second SPB flight developed by the University of California, Berkeley. The mission of COSI is to probe the mysterious origins of galactic positrons, study how new elements are created in the galaxy, and perform pioneering studies of black holes and gamma-ray bursts.
This is already the fifth launch attempt since previous attempts failed to the weather condition.
People who live in the southern hemisphere mid-latitude areas may get a chance to see the balloon as it travels around the globe particularly during sunrise and sunset.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
