Extreme Cold Weather gear is provided. USAP provides everyone with the Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear that is necessary for the cold conditions we will be in. This includes:
Odds and ends that are really important.
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The U.S. has an active and healthy high-altitude balloon program that does a lot of cool science and technology development missions for the space industry. The NASA Balloon Program Office is managed by Goddard Space Flight Center out of the Wallops Flight Facility, but the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) in Palestine, Texas is responsible for all of the services surrounding high-altitude balloon missions. The majority of U.S. missions are sponsored through grants by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), although universities and companies in the industry also sometimes use balloon missions as opportunities for low-cost technology development. A unique aspect of balloon missions is that the payloads can almost always be recovered, which improves the likelihood of maximum data return and even allows us to refurbish the flight systems and instruments to use them again on future flights. How big are these balloons? These balloons are huge. Each long duration balloon (LDB) is capable of carrying payloads up to about 8000 lbs (~3600 kg) and can fly at altitudes up to 137,000 feet (~42 km), depending on the weight of the payload. When fully inflated, the balloon is 400 feet tall and 460 feet in diameter and looks like a giant pumpkin. To put it in perspective, a football field is 360 feet long and 160 feet wide So you could play football inside one of these balloons I guess! This is my favorite diagram from NASA that shows the size of the balloons they use. At launch (left) it is only partially inflated because once it gets high into the atmosphere there is so little air pressure that the balloon expands to its full giant size (right) even though it only started with a small amount of helium. Oh an the little black dot at the bottom that is labeled "Payload" - that represents our 22-foot tall gondola, which is tiny in comparison to the balloon itself. Image credit: NASA. Where do balloons launch from? Launch location depends on each mission’s science goals and how long you want to stay in the air. Most launches occur out of Fort Sumner, New Mexico or McMurdo Station in Antarctica, although there other launch sites around the world, including in Sweden, Alaska, and Australia. How long do balloons stay in the air? Typically flights out of Fort Sumner, NM can only stay afloat for about 8-30 hours due to airspace and population safety restrictions and wind currents. The BOPPS mission that I was a part of last year lasted for 17 hours before we had to cut it down, and that was considered very successful. You can see a map of the flight path that BOPPS took here. Flights out of McMurdo in Antarctica can stay afloat for several weeks since the Antarctic stratospheric wind currents make a slow loop around the continent, and there are no populated areas that cause safety concerns. Below are some flight paths that last year's Antarctic missions took. ANITA III on the left is an example of what most people want: one full revolution around the continent and the start of a second revolution, so a total of over 22 days in flight! SPIDER on the right also looks like it was probably a successful mission with 16.5 days of flight time and almost a full revolution. For the two missions in the middle, there could be any number of reasons why they were shorter, and I can only speculate as to what they were. More than likely something was not working correctly with their systems and they decided to end the mission early. How do they decide when to end a mission? There are many factors that go into deciding when to end a mission. If something is broken to the point where you cannot collect any good science data, there is no point in keeping the mission afloat. Flying balloons takes resources: people's time spent planning and commanding the systems, communication time and bandwidth with satellites to get the data back, and people's time spent waiting on the ground to go retrieve the hardware after it comes down. Many things can happen during flight, some expected and some unexpected. You can run out of cryogens that keep the instruments operating at the temperatures they need in order to work. You could run out of power if you only have batteries and no solar panels, A mechanism could get stuck or stop working leaving you with the inability to point or control some components. Occasionally the balloon itself will have a problem and will leak helium must faster than expected (but that is rare with these tried-and-true balloons). Eventually you will also run out of ballast, which is what we use to keep the balloon up at the desired altitude. So just like birthday balloons eventually get droopy, these balloons will eventually also start sinking back to the ground.
Whenever I tell people that I am going to Antarctica for the next few months, I always get tons of questions. So this is where I will keep anyone who is interested up-to-date on my adventures. Feel free to ask any questions, and I will do my best to answer.
How cold will it be?
First, it will be summer in Antarctica, which is similar to cold winter days in the U.S. Because I will be in the Antarctic Circle (same as the Arctic Circle but on the south end of Earth), the sun never actually sets. So I will be in 100% daylight almost the whole time I am gone, except for maybe a few hours of dusky darkness in early November. Historical averages show that temperatures in McMurdo (where I'll be) will range from around 0 deg F in November to 30 deg F in the peak of summer in later December. Since the sun doesn't set, the temperature won't drop at night like we're used to. However it is very susceptible to changes due to weather conditions: cloud cover and wind chill can make things much colder. Interestingly though, during the "Polar Vortex" last year there were actually a few days where it was warmer in Antarctica than it was in parts of the Northern U.S. EDIT: I know I have told a few people that it will be dark for at least a few hours in the first few weeks that I am there. Apparently that is wrong. It is already light all the time. It is very weird seeing weather websites show sunrise at 12:00 AM and sunset at 12:00 AM. :) What does your mission actually do? Our mission is called the Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory 2 or STO-2. STO-1 launched in January of 2012, but I wasn't involved with that mission. The PI is Chris Walker from the University of Arizona. Our team is composed of the gondola team from APL and the science team from University of Arizona, Arizona State University, JPL, and even SRON, the Dutch Space Agency. Explaining the mission name will give you a better understanding of what it is all about: Stratospheric = It will be on a balloon up in the stratosphere averaging around 115,000 feet at float altitude. Terahertz = Terahertz waves are at the low ("far") end of the infrared band. If you remember from physics, the electromagnetic spectrum divides waves into the following bands: radio, microwave, infrared (IR), visible, ultraviolet (UV), x-ray, and gamma-ray. The sensors on our mission will detect signals in the far infrared, which is between microwaves and mid/near infrared (used in night vision technologies). Observatory = It is a telescope! Hanging from a balloon! We are mapping the Milky Way galaxy (and some parts outside of our galaxy like the Large Magellanic Cloud - LMC) to better understand star formation. We will be pointing particularly at the interstellar medium, which is where stars are born! I will be honest in that I don't really understand the science much beyond that, but I am happy to ask our science team questions if anyone has any. I am on the engineering team that just makes sure our systems all work. |
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