NASA's Balloon Program

Scientific Balloon Program Infographic

A NASA super pressure balloon (SPB) takes to the skies on a potentially record-breaking, around-the-world flight, from Wanaka, New Zealand. Flight managers seek to break the current SPB flight duration record of 54 days while maintaining a constant float altitude.

The science and engineering communities have previously identified long-duration balloon flights at constant altitudes as playing an important role in providing inexpensive access to the near-space environment for science and technology. The SPB can carry a payload weighing several tons to an altitude above 99.5 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere.

As the balloon travels around the Earth, it may be visible from the ground, particularly at sunrise and sunset, to those who live in the southern hemisphere’s mid-latitudes, such as Argentina and South Africa. Anyone may track the progress of the flight, which includes a map showing the balloon’s real-time location, at:

http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/newzealand/wanaka.htm

Credits: NASA/BPO

The Boron And Carbon Cosmic rays in the Upper Stratosphere (BACCUS) payload prepares for launch via a 40-million-cubic-foot NASA Scientific Balloon.

Images Credit: NASA

Carried by a balloon the size of a football stadium, ASTHROS will use a telescope to observe wavelengths of light that aren’t visible from the ground. Work has begun on ASTHROS (short for Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths), a new mission that will carry a cutting-edge 8.4-foot telescope high into the stratosphere on a balloon that is tentatively planned to launch in December 2023 from Antarctica.

This illustration shows a high-altitude balloon ascending into the upper atmosphere. When fully inflated, these balloons are 400 feet (150 meters) wide, or about the size of a football stadium, and reach an altitude of 130,000 feet (24.6 miles or 40 kilometers).

Image Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab/Michael Lentz

A scientific balloon is partially inflated before flight.

Image Credit: NASA

In Antarctica in January, 2013 – the summer at the South Pole – scientists released 20 balloons, each eight stories tall, into the air to help answer an enduring space weather question: when the giant radiation belts surrounding Earth lose material, where do the extra particles actually go?

This NASA-funded mission is called BARREL, for Balloon Array for Radiation belt Relativistic Electron Losses. Each balloon launched by the BARREL team floated for anywhere from three to 40 days, measuring X-rays produced by fast-moving electrons high up in the atmosphere.

BARREL works hand in hand with another NASA mission called the Van Allen Probes, which travels directly through the Van Allen radiation belts. The belts wax and wane over time in response to incoming energy and material from the sun, sometimes intensifying the radiation through which satellites orbiting Earth must travel. Scientists need to understand this process better, and even provide forecasts of such space weather, in order to protect our spacecraft.

Image Credit: NASA

The GUSTO mission, launching aboard a football-stadium-sized, zero-pressure scientific balloon in December 2023, will fly an Ultralong-Duration Balloon (ULDB) carrying a telescope with carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen emission line detectors. This unique combination of data will supply the spectral and spatial resolution information needed for the mission team to untangle the complexities of the cosmic material found between stars, and map out large sections of the plane of our Milky Way galaxy and the nearby galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The GUSTO mission ended Feb. 26 at 6:24 EST, setting a new record for a NASA heavy-lift, long-duration balloon flight at float for 57 days, 7 hours, 38 minutes. The payload descended by parachute landing safely on the ground in Antarctica. Any recovery effort, while not required for mission success, will be coordinated through the U.S. National Science Foundation, including support from Antarctic programs.

Image Credit: NASA/Scott Battaion, JHUAPL (bottom middle)

NASA's Super Pressure Balloon (SPB) fully inflated and flying at 110,000 feet as seen from the balloon gondola looking up.

Image Credit: NASA

A NASA scientific balloon readies for launch from Fort Sumner, New Mexico. NASA's Fort Sumner Scientific Balloon campaign kicks-off Aug. 31 with a test flight. Four flights total are planned during the campaign.

Image Credit: NASA/Patrick Black

A NASA super pressure balloon (SPB) takes to the skies on a potentially record-breaking, around-the-world flight, from Wanaka, New Zealand. Flight managers seek to break the current SPB flight duration record of 54 days while maintaining a constant float altitude.

The science and engineering communities have previously identified long-duration balloon flights at constant altitudes as playing an important role in providing inexpensive access to the near-space environment for science and technology. The SPB can carry a payload weighing several tons to an altitude above 99.5 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere.

As the balloon travels around the Earth, it may be visible from the ground, particularly at sunrise and sunset, to those who live in the southern hemisphere’s mid-latitudes, such as Argentina and South Africa. Anyone may track the progress of the flight, which includes a map showing the balloon’s real-time location, at:

http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/newzealand/wanaka.htm

Credits: NASA/BPO

Sweden, 2012. A super pressure balloon is being readied for launch.

Credits: NASA/BPO

Following a Sept. 27 weather briefing, the NASA scientific balloon launch team and the Balloon Rapid Response for ISON (BRRISON) payload team targeted 8 p.m. EDT, Saturday, Sept. 28, for the BRRISON launch from Ft. Sumner, N.M.

NASA image captured December 25, 2011 A NASA scientific balloon awaits launch in McMurdo, Antarctica. The balloon, carrying Indiana University's Cosmic Ray Electron Synchrotron Telescope (CREST), was launched on December 25. After a circum-navigational flight around the South Pole, the payload landed on January 5. The CREST payload is one of two scheduled as part of this seasons' annual NASA Antarctic balloon Campaign which is conducted in cooperation with the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs. The campaign's second payload is the University of Arizona's Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory (STO). You can follow the flights at the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility's web site at www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice.htm Credit: NASA NASA image use policy. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

A NASA Super Pressure Balloon just before launch from Wanaka, New Zealand, March 26, 2015, on a journey that will significantly expand the envelope for conducting near-space scientific investigations.

Image Credit: NASA

Technicians attach the Sunrise payload to its balloon and parachute. The giant crane holds the gondola plus telescope payload steady until the balloon inflates and rises to an altitude sufficient to lift the payload from the crane. This image was taken at the launch site in Kiruna, Sweden June 2009. The balloon-borne gondola contained a 1-meter solar telescope as well as other instruments on a mission to investigate the structure and dynamics of the Sun's magnetic fields.

Image Credit: University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

NASA is returning to Wanaka, New Zealand, for another Super Pressure Balloon (SPB) launch campaign in 2017. Pictured here, the 18.8 million-cubic-foot SPB prepares fro lift-off from Wanaka Airport in 2016.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Rodman