NASA reported Monday that a large science balloon broke two records in flight duration on Jan. 24. The balloon known as the Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (Super-TIGER) was launched on Dec. 8 at 3:45p.m, EST from the Long Duration Balloon site. The balloon was managed by Washington University of St. Louis and a total of 55 days, 1 hour and 34 minutes aloft, flying over Anarctica. The balloon reached an altitude of 127,000 feet, which is four times that of commercial airplanes.
"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. The first record was broken on the Super-TIGER team on the 46th day on Jan. 24 for longest flight balloon of its size. Upon landing Friday, a second record was broken, making the Super-Tiger balloon the longest flight of any heavy scientific balloon. Included in that category are NASA's Long Duration Balloons. NASA's Super Pressure Balloon test flight in 2009 held the previous record with its total flight duration of 54 days, 1 hour and 29 minutes.
Information retrieved from the mission was gathered from a new instrument that the balloon was carrying to measure rare elements. Many of those elements are heavier than iron and located among the constant high energy cosmic-rays that shoot at the Earth from far out in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
"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 abundance of data will be fully analyzed by scientists within about two years.
Due to wind patterns that occured at the South Pole, the balloon was able to stay aloft as long as it did. Many variables are taken into consideration when launching a balloon including anticyclonic, or counter-clockwise and winds circulating from east to west in the stratosphere there. All of these variables work together naturally to allow for balloons to fly for long durations above 100,000 feet.
