NASA craft achieves world record for longest flight

NASA’s massive 18.8-million-cubic-foot (532,000-cubic-meter) balloon has finally come home to roost—and has set some impressive records along the way.

On May 17, NASA launched a super pressure balloon (SPB) from Wanaka Airport, New Zealand, with several goals in mind. First and foremost, they aimed to test and validate SPB technology, with the ultimate goal of a long-duration flight (as in, 100 or more days) at a mid-level altitude. Second, they hoped to take advantage of the trial to attach a gamma-ray telescope known as Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) to study radiation.

46 days, 20 hours, and 19 minutes later, the balloon made contact with Earth once more—a record-setting jaunt, according to a NASA release.

“We’re extremely pleased with the flight time we achieved with this mission, far and away the longest mid-latitude flight of a NASA heavy-lift balloon to date,” said Debbie Fairbrother, NASA’s Balloon Program Office chief. “We’ll continue to strive for even longer duration flight, 100 days or more, and what we learn from this year’s mission will help take us there.”

Many Records from NASA’s Craft

Besides smashing the flight-time record, the SPB flight marked a good number of other firsts. For example, it was the first time an SPB carried a science payload during a mid-latitude flight—the COSI telescope. Using this sensor, the team detected its first gamma-ray burst on May 30.

Moreover, the balloon was the first to complete a mid-latitude circumnavigation—which it finished in 14 days, 13 hours, and 42 minutes. Further, it was the first time the NASA team operated balloons in the northern and southern hemispheres at the same time, as a balloon was launched in Texas for 10 hours on June 30.

While the longer-duration flight was the hope for this test, NASA’s balloon operators called it early after the balloon after it began to vary too far from its operational float altitude of 110,000 feet (33.5 km). Some fluctuation was expected during its journey, as temperatures dropped between daytime and evening.

“Balloons are thermal vehicles, and some altitude variance isn’t uncommon during periods of extreme cooling and heating,” said Fairbrother. “Given the occasional periods of altitude variation we noted, and at times the magnitude we observed, we’re eager to retrieve the balloon and payload so we can analyze the flight data and balloon.”

But for this test, the balloon went a little too far for comfort. At one point, it dropped nearly as low as 70,000 feet (21.3 km) whilst flying over a severe cold storm, when temperatures dropped to as low as -112 Fahrenheit (-80 Celsius). It’s believed that the balloon bled off helium during the colder storms before resealing itself, although more data is needed to know for sure.

“At its core, this was always a test flight,” said Fairbrother. “We’re looking forward to the next phase of analysis. We’ll apply any lessons learned to future missions as we continue to eye our 100-day duration goal.”

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Image credit: NASA

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