
Copernical Team
NASA to fly six scientific balloons from New Mexico

NASA's Scientific Balloon Program is moving full-steam ahead into the fall 2022 campaign with six scientific, engineering, and student balloon flights supporting 17 missions. The flights are scheduled to launch from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, from mid-August through mid-October.
With one balloon already off the ground, a test flight carrying several different technology payloads and other piggyback missions, the team hopes to launch the five remaining balloons by the end of the launch window in support of multiple science and technology initiatives.
"Our balloon platforms can lift several thousand pounds to the edge of space, allowing for multiple, various scientific instruments, technologies, and education payloads to fly together on one balloon flight," said Debbie Fairbrother, Scientific Balloon Program chief at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Some of the science missions flying this campaign include the BALloon-Based Observations for sunlit Aurora (BALBOA), testing a wide-view infrared camera designed to study daytime auroras; the Planetary Imaging Concept Testbed Using a Recoverable Experiment—Coronagraph (PICTURE-C) mission that will directly image and characterize dust and debris orbiting nearby stars with the possibility of detecting bright, gas giant planets outside our solar system using a telescope; the TinMan mission hopes to better understand the effects of thermal neutrons in Earth's atmosphere on aircraft electronics; and the 16th High-Altitude Student Platform (HASP) mission that will fly 12 student-built payloads.
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