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No Flights Of Fancy

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By KURT LOFT | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 11, 2007

TAMPA - Who needs an expensive rocket when you can ride high on a cheap balloon?

That's the attitude of scientists who recently finished a landmark test flight of a telescope on a big bag filled with helium.

The inexpensive project soared to 120,000 feet - 23 miles - and offered unprecedented data for such a low-tech platform.

A team at the National Center for Atmospheric Research last month launched a solar telescope on a balloon about the size of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. It allowed the scientists to do some serious work without breaking the bank.

Observatories in orbit often ride atop rockets costing more than $100 million, making them impractical for anyone but well-funded researchers. Balloons, on the other hand, cost a fraction of the price of a rocket and can carry instruments to the edges of space.

"A project like this might cost a couple of million dollars, and it's all recoverable when it lands," says David Hosansky, a spokesman with NCAR, which created the High Altitude Observatory project, known as Sunrise. "And one of the things they're excited about is laying the ground work for suborbital missions using balloons."

By using balloons, scientists hope to streamline their work, going with the faster-better-cheaper mentality at a time when dollars for science are scarce. Their efforts could lead to a new generation of balloon missions that require no rockets, launch pads, expensive support and communications systems.

Balloon gondolas can hold all sorts of instrument combinations, and special cushions allow the system to survive a hard landing.

The High Altitude Observatory lifted off in early October in Fort Sumner, N.M., and captured images of the sun for 10 hours. The gondola then separated from the balloon and descended by parachute, landing safely in a field outside Dalhart, Texas. The cushions, called crush pads, worked as hoped by softening the impact of touchdown.

Researchers will take advantage of their subject - the sun - by soon sending up a balloon over the Arctic, where the telescope can capture continuous images for two weeks. The uninterrupted time is critical in studying changes in the sun's magnetic fields. By comparison, a telescope in Earth orbit can make solar observations for only 45 minutes before the Earth's shadow blocks the view.

Still, high-altitude balloons present a number of challenges. The current project requires a gondola sturdy enough to carry three tons of hardware, including a 39-inch solar telescope, communications equipment, computers and disk drives, a video camera, solar panels, roll cages and crush pads.

The equipment also must endure extreme temperature changes, and the gondola frame cannot vibrate in ways that would affect the telescope, which must stay focused. A sophisticated gyroscope system keeps its eyeball steady.

What makes balloon experiments so attractive is they can be reused and tweaked. If something doesn't work right the first time, it can be fixed and sent up again - and again.

"This is a very economical way of rising above the atmosphere and capturing images that cannot be captured from Earth," says project director Michael Knölker. "What we are doing is laying the groundwork for the next generation of space flights."

Reporter Kurt Loft can be reached at (813) 259-7570 or kloft@tampatrib.com.

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