Here's the first of many balloon missions being flown over Antarctica-- this one tracked on Google maps via satellite ostensibly. A reader fed me this information and I was completely unaware balloons were being used to this extent. Note how the balloon almost circumnavigated the island. This is certainly worth looking into further and I'll do so in coming months.
It's not just one balloon... but hundreds of balloons have been released.
Source: From Comments by Felix below...
Can we really believe that balloons have been released from all the following marked [in red] locations?
http://www.livescience.com/17599-research-balloons-antarctica-nsf-bts.html
[superimposed on the missing google hole,in part]
http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/022/925/i02/Figuretwo.jpg?1324504771
It doesn't seem possible that there could have been the sheer number of releases as pictured above. Imagine the cost for one thing. And the launches require crane trucks and other equipment. How is it possible that crane trucks can be all over antarctica? Note the missing hold part in the middle again on the Google photo... which appears quite distorted.
They do seem at pains to show the paths of the balloons circling Antarctica - the main object was to measure Ozone, wasn't it?
ReplyDeleteThere is a very recent published study [1999 - 2011] which used balloons which were just sent up from a single station [Belgrano II] and compared with measurements from the South Pole station
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/217/2014/acp-14-217-2014.pdf
The entire system is flown on a TOTEX balloon (TX-1200) filled with helium. Balloons were dip-oil-treated to reduce the occurrence of low burst height under very cold conditions, the mean burst alti- tude under normal conditions being around 30 km.
Video of the balloons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4Ug-NWat04
They don't seem to need transnavigating balloons to make their measurements.
Here's another balloon flight
ReplyDeleteOn January 12, 2000 the MAXIS (MeV Auroral X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy) balloon was launched from Williams Field, McMurdo
The MAXIS balloon was terminated on January 30, 2000 at 22:13 UT after a successful 450 hour flight. The balloon was cut-down over Victoria Land, approximately 390 nautical miles from McMurdo Station. On February 3, 2000 the recovery team (Steven Peterzen and Robyn Millan) reached the payload via Twin Otter
Here's the path:
http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/space/SpaceExp/Balloon/Antarctica99/data/final_traject.jpg
It is seen to overlap its starting longitude.
Can we really believe that balloons have been released from all the following marked [in red] locations?
http://www.livescience.com/17599-research-balloons-antarctica-nsf-bts.html
[superimposed on the missing google hole,in part]
http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/022/925/i02/Figuretwo.jpg?1324504771
But, oh no [again] another aborted NASA mission in late 2014
http://www.nature.com/news/nasa-launches-next-generation-scientific-balloon-1.16642
NASA has launched its most ambitious scientific balloon ever. On 28 December at 21:16 London time.... experts expect the flight to last for 100 days or longer.....COSI is the first science payload designed from scratch to take advantage of NASA’s super-pressure technology, says team leader Steven Boggs, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley......UPDATE: NASA brought the super-pressure balloon down two days after launch because of a leak. The balloon landed on the Antarctic ice about 560 kilometres from McMurdo Station.
"That was awesome" [for two days]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNLtx2KXPGk
An earlier ballon flight with path from 2009:
Deletehttp://www.nature.com/news/2009/090208/full/news.2009.85.html
Super-pressure balloons therefore offer not just the extra data gathered with more time aloft, but greater stability and, in turn, the potential to cover other regions of Earth, as they can fly around the Earth at mid-latitudes at any time of year. That would open up regions of the sky unseen by balloon-borne telescopes, and also regions of the spectrum — namely X-rays and γ-rays — that can't be studied as effectively at the poles because of the strong background of charged cosmic rays funnelled in by Earth's magnetic field.
In July, Nature News profiled the potential of super-pressure balloons to become a cheap alternative to rockets and satellites, as heralded by a daylong test of a smaller super-pressure balloon. The current record-breaking test — by a balloon more than three times the size of the earlier one — means that that day is closer, says Pierce. [David Pierce, chief of NASA's balloon programme at Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops facility in Virginia]
The test balloon's flight path.CSBF/NASA
The test balloon was launched from McMurdo Station on 28 December [2009]
The last of the NASA balloon staff left McMurdo Station last week, but the balloon continues to drift in lazy circles around the continent at 33,800 metres, says Dwayne Orr, deputy site manager for NASA's balloon facility in Palestine, Texas, and team leader for this past season of flights from Antarctica.
The balloon won't reach the 100-day goal on this flight, because Pierce wants to bring it down over the continent so that staff can recover it during the next summer season. The polar vortex winds that push the balloon around in circles have started to break up, and the balloon will eventually veer off course. And so, probably by the end of the month, engineers will bring the balloon down by remotely tearing a hole in it and deploying a parachute.
The lazy circle ranch:
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090208/images/balloon-2.jpg
And this balloon veered off the google map!
http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800/2013/1-supertigersh.jpg
source:
http://phys.org/news/2013-01-super-tiger-shatters-scientific-balloon-antarctica.html
http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800/2013/2-supertigersh.jpg
The balloon’s position on January 22. Each circuit of the continent is accorded a different color. Note the snarl where it hung up over the mountains.
The experiment was launched from the Ross Ice Shelf on Dec. 9, 2012 and has circled the South Pole two and a half times at an altitude of about 130,000 feet, three or four times higher than passenger planes cruise. The team hopes it will complete the circuit in another 8 to 10 days, coming back round to McMurdo latitude, or at least close enough that it can be retrieved.
NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, [which] tracks and controls the balloon.
Hmmm NASA is in total control here.
I wonder how the remote control hole-tearing mechanism works? Then the parachute remotely deploys. I imagine it to be engineering by a team similar to the Apollo lunar lander team-- the NASA Comic Book Team! Same thing with the Curiosity Mars Lander mechanism. Rube Goldberg started it all.
ReplyDeleteNote this:
The balloon won't reach the 100-day goal on this flight, because Pierce wants to bring it down over the continent so that staff can recover it during the next summer season.
My comment-- So with millions of square miles of Antarctican ice and mountains, they can just "drive out there and pick it up"? It's apparently trivial. As are the missions where individuals go to the South Pole unaided-- on a snow bike.
There's just no way to verify ANY of this... including the baloon flights. I'll keep looking for "data" and "cooberating evidence".
Another flight was announced for Antarctic winter 2015 to great NASA fanfare
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-s-grips-balloon-team-arrives-in-antarctica
November 3 2015
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/antarctic-anticyclone-sending-two-nasa-scientific-balloons-flying-in-circles
December 11 2015
What happened? Flight complete after 11 days
http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice.htm
http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/map/balloon8/mini8.png
Not as good as 2013...
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/supertiger_track_copy.jpg
The groundtrack of the Super-TIGER mission, which flew from Antarctica during the 2012/2013 campaign, is shown here. Over the record-breaking 55 day, 1 hour and 24 minute flight, the balloon completed nearly three revolutions about the south pole due to a weather phenomena known as an anticyclone.
Credits: NASA/file photo
video of launch and landing..
Deletehttps://www.facebook.com/1392901317615113/videos/vb.1392901317615113/1691829787722263/?type=2&theater