US space agency NASA has successfully launched a super pressure scientific balloon from New Zealand, completing a 15-year goal.
The football-stadium-sized, heavy-lift super pressure balloon lifted off from Wanaka Airport, in the country’s South Island, on Saturday on a mission aimed for 100 days or more of flight in the earth’s upper atmosphere, NASA said in a statement.
The first balloon launched on April 16 and had already completed three revolutions about the earth’s southern hemisphere flying at about 33,000 metres.
Program chief Debbie Fairbrother said having two super-pressure balloons in flight at the same time was a goal 15 years in the making.
“I’m so thrilled that on this day, we did it!” she said.
“I could not be prouder of our balloon and science teams for their accomplishment.
“With these two flights, we are setting ourselves up to support more and more-advanced science in the coming years.”
NASA said the Extreme Universe Space Observatory 2 (EUSO-2) was flying on the second balloon.
It is a science mission from the University of Chicago that will detect ultra-high energy cosmic-ray particles from beyond our galaxy as they penetrate earth’s atmosphere.
The origins of these particles are not well known, so data collected from EUSO-2 will help solve this science mystery, NASA said.
Australian Associated Press