Super-Tiger Balloon Breaks Records While Collecting Data

Image Credit – NASA

(Source NASA) – A large NASA science balloon has broken two flight duration records while flying over Antarctica carrying an instrument that detected 50 million cosmic rays.


The Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (Super-TIGER) balloon launched at 3:45 p.m. EST, Dec. 8 from the Long Duration Balloon site near McMurdo Station. It spent 55 days, 1 hour, and 34 minutes aloft at 127,000 feet, more than four times the altitude of most commercial airliners, and was brought down to end the mission on Friday. Washington University of St. Louis managed the mission.

On Jan. 24, the Super-TIGER team broke the record for longest flight by a balloon of its size, flying for 46 days. The team broke another record Friday after landing by becoming the longest flight of any heavy-lift scientific balloon, including NASA’s Long Duration Balloons. The previous record was set in 2009 by NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon test flight at 54 days, 1 hour, and 29 minutes.

“Scientific balloons give scientists the ability to gather critical science data for a long duration at a very low relative cost,” said Vernon Jones, NASA’s Balloon Program Scientist.

Super-TIGER flew a new instrument for measuring rare elements heavier than iron among the flux of high-energy cosmic rays bombarding Earth from elsewhere in our Milky Way galaxy. The information retrieved from this mission will be used to understand where these energetic atomic nuclei are produced and how they achieve their very high energies.

The balloon gathered so much data it will take scientists about two years to analyze it fully.

“This has been a very successful flight because of the long duration, which allowed us to detect large numbers of cosmic rays,” said Dr. Bob Binns, principal investigator of the Super-TIGER mission. “The instrument functioned very well.”

The balloon was able to stay aloft as long as it did because of prevailing wind patterns at the South Pole. The launch site takes advantage of anticyclonic, or counter-clockwise, winds circulating from east to west in the stratosphere there. This circulation and the sparse population work together to enable long-duration balloon flights at altitudes above 100,000 feet.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs manages the U.S. Antarctic Program and provides logistic support for all U.S. scientific operations in Antarctica. NSF’s Antarctic support contractor supports the launch and recovery operations for NASA’s Balloon Program in Antarctica. Mission data were downloaded using NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System.

NASA RELEASE : 13-037

Dan Mantel - KnowledgeOrb Contributor

Share
Published by
Dan Mantel - KnowledgeOrb Contributor

Recent Posts

NASA’s Best Newly Released Images of Mars June, 2024

https://youtu.be/ycPwgUI3nag NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers newly released images and pictures of Mars. Mars is…

6 months ago

NASA SLS A ROCKET FUELED BY POLITICS

https://youtu.be/KKygQhBQZnQ NASA SLS Rocket design was done by politicians as much as engineers. There is…

7 months ago

Worst Geomagnetic Storm Since 2005! 5 Earth directed CMEs!

https://youtu.be/slELcxXeLMc First G4 Geomagnetic Storm since 2005.Issue Time: 2024 May 09 1722 UTCWATCH: Geomagnetic Storm…

8 months ago

Rocket Launch Long March-2D Yaogan 42-02

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1_S9tHINK24 China launched Chinese military remote sensing satellite on a Long March 2D rocket from…

8 months ago

Sun 420 Super High…Activity, CME, Flare, Sunspots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlysKwHI2jw The sun put on an impressive display on 4-17-24 to 4-20-24. Many flares, CMEs…

8 months ago

NASA SpaceX Lunar Elevator of Death!

https://youtu.be/8lT0__zYuJk The NASA SpaceX Human Landing System (HLS) for lunar moon landings requires astronauts to…

8 months ago