Poppy gets trip on Nasa balloon flight
A humble paper poppy has started its journey around the world under a $1.6 million super pressure balloon, tucked into equipment that sends science data back to Earth.
Nasa communications spokesman Jeremy Eggers said the Anzac Day poppy was tucked next to the balloon’s iridium, used to uplink or downlink data from the payload.
Nasa and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility successfully launched the football stadium-sized, heavy-lift super pressure balloon from Wanaka Airport at 10.50am yesterday.
The mission is designed to run 100 or more days, floating at 33.5 kilometres over the globe in the southern hemisphere’s mid-latitude band.
If Nasa has got the weather forecasts correct, the balloon should circumnavigate the world once every five to 15 days.
Nasa balloon programme chief Debbie Fairbrother was delighted with the team’s third successful launch in as many years.
‘‘Following our 2015 and 2016 New Zealand missions, we’ve learned key lessons on the balloon design that have gone into perfecting the technology for this year’s flight. I’m very proud of the team that delivered us to this point and I’m hopeful that third time’s the charm for realising 100 days of flight,’’ she said.
The Nasa team want to break a 54-day flight record for a super pressure balloon. The previous two flights from Wanaka ended early. In 2015, the balloon sprung a leak on its 33rd day and landed in the Australian Outback. Last year, the balloon flight ended in Peru after 46 days.
The main objective is to validate the balloon technology, but it is carrying a cosmic ray telescope as a science ‘‘mission of opportunity’’ for the International Extreme Universe Space Observatory. The telescope will be used to detect ultra-high energy cosmic rays from beyond the galaxy as they penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. As the highenergy particles enter the atmosphere, they interact with nitrogen molecules in the air and create a UV fluorescence light.