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HOW TO SEE NASA'S GIANT SPACE BALLOON On May 17th, NASA successfully launched a gigantic helium balloon from Wanaka, New Zealand, on a 100+ day mission to the stratosphere. The 19 million cubic foot behemoth is now floating over southern Australia where it is visible to the naked eye. "Last night, there were many calls across New South Wales about a strange glowing orb," reports Ray Pickard from the Bathurst Observatory Research Facility in Bathurst, Australia. "This image taken through my telescope shows it to be NASA's balloon launched from New Zealand."  This is a test flight of NASA's super pressure balloon, which is capable of remaining at a near-constant altitude in the stratosphere for months. The previous record for such a balloon is 54 days. Engineers hope to shatter that mark by a factor of 2. The balloon's payload includes an infrasound experiment developed by researchers at the University of North Carolina. Previous balloon flights of their instrument have recorded low-frequency sounds in the stratosphere, some of which are believed to be new to science. Also onboard is NASA's Compton Spectrometer and Imager, COSI, gamma-ray telescope; among other things, it will study the origin of positrons in the Milky Way. Currently, the balloon is 110,000 feet above Australia. Soon it will enter a winter stratospheric cyclone that will carry it eastward, circumnavigating the globe at southern mid-latitudes once every one to three weeks. People near the flight path over Australia, New Zealand, southern Africa and South America may be able to see the balloon as it passes by. The best time to look is around sunrise or sunset when the rays of the low-hanging sun paint the balloon golden-red against the dark twilight sky. You can follow the balloon in real time at NASA dot gov. |
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Pity it's cloudy, cant see it. Judgment Day will be interesting - and all paths lead there.
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