Feb 4 2013

From The Space Library

RELEASE: 13-037 - NASA'S SUPER-TIGER BALLOON BREAKS RECORDS WHILE COLLECTING DATA --WASHINGTON -- A large NASA science balloon has broken two flight duration records while flying over Antarctica carrying an instrument that detected 50 million cosmic rays. The Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (Super-TIGER) balloon launched at 3:45 p.m. EST, Dec. 8 from the Long Duration Balloon site near McMurdo Station. It spent 55 days, 1 hour, and 34 minutes aloft at 127,000 feet, more than four times the altitude of most commercial airliners, and was brought down to end the mission on Friday. Washington University of St. Louis managed the mission. On Jan. 24, the Super-TIGER team broke the record for longest flight by a balloon of its size, flying for 46 days. The team broke another record Friday after landing by becoming the longest flight of any heavy-lift scientific balloon, including NASA's Long Duration Balloons. The previous record was set in 2009 by NASA's Super Pressure Balloon test flight at 54 days, 1 hour, and 29 minutes. Scientific balloons give scientists the ability to gather critical science data for a long duration at a very low relative cost, said Vernon Jones, NASA's Balloon Program Scientist. Super-TIGER flew a new instrument for measuring rare elements heavier than iron among the flux of high-energy cosmic rays bombarding Earth from elsewhere in our Milky Way galaxy. The information retrieved from this mission will be used to understand where these energetic atomic nuclei are produced and how they achieve their very high energies. The balloon gathered so much data it will take scientists about two years to analyze it fully. This has been a very successful flight because of the long duration, which allowed us to detect large numbers of cosmic rays, said Dr. Bob Binns, principal investigator of the Super-TIGER mission. "The instrument functioned very well." The balloon was able to stay aloft as long as it did because of prevailing wind patterns at the South Pole. The launch site takes advantage of anticyclonic, or counter-clockwise, winds circulating from east to west in the stratosphere there. This circulation and the sparse population work together to enable long-duration balloon flights at altitudes above 100,000 feet. The National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs manages the U.S. Antarctic Program and provides logistic support for all U.S. scientific operations in Antarctica. NSF's Antarctic support contractor supports the launch and recovery operations for NASA's Balloon Program in Antarctica. Mission data were downloaded using NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System.

MEDIA ADVISORY: M13-026 - SPACE STATION CARGO SHIP FLIGHTS TO BE BROADCAST ON NASA TV --WASHINGTON -- NASA Television will provide live coverage of the departure of one Russian cargo spacecraft at the International Space Station and the launch and arrival of another. The ISS Progress 48 resupply ship, which arrived at the station last August, will depart the Pirs docking compartment, part of the Russian segment, on Saturday, Feb. 9. The Progress will leave orbit three hours later and burn up above the Pacific Ocean. NASA TV coverage of the undocking will begin at 8 a.m. EST. The undocking is scheduled for 8:15 a.m. That move will clear Pirs for the arrival of the new ISS Progress 50 resupply spacecraft. It is scheduled to launch at 9:41 a.m. (8:41 p.m. Kazakhstan time) Monday, Feb. 11, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA TV coverage of the launch begins at 9:30 a.m. The Progress is loaded with almost 3 tons of food, fuel, supplies and experiment hardware for the six crew members aboard the orbital laboratory. Like its two predecessors, Progress 50 is scheduled to launch into an accelerated, four-orbit rendezvous with the station, docking only six hours after launch. NASA TV coverage will resume at 3 p.m. for the rendezvous and docking activities, with docking scheduled for 3:40 p.m. If any technical issues arise, the Russian flight control team can default to a standard two-day rendezvous plan for the Progress that would result in docking on Feb. 13.

MEDIA ADVISORY: M13-027 - NASA HOSTS FEB. 7 MEDIA TELECONFERENCE ON ASTEROID EARTH FLYBY --WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EST, Thursday, Feb. 7, to discuss an asteroid 150-feet in diameter that will pass close, but safely, by Earth on Feb. 15. The flyby creates a unique opportunity for researchers to observe and learn more about asteroids. The teleconference participants are: --Lindley Johnson, program executive, Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington --Timothy Spahr, director, Minor Planet Center, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. --Donald Yeomans, manager, NEO Office, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. --Amy Mainzer, principal investigator, NEOWISE observatory, JPL --Edward Beshore, deputy principal investigator, Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer Asteroid Sample Return Mission, University of Arizona, Tucson