Jan 21 2002
From The Space Library
A NASA scientific balloon established a new flight-duration record of 31 days and 20 hours in a flight that included two orbits of the South Pole. The previous record for long-duration balloon flight was 26 days. Weighing 3,687 pounds (1,670 kilograms) and expanding to a diameter of nearly 424 feet (130 meters), the balloon was larger than a football field and taller than the Washington Monument but constructed of a polyethylene material of the same thickness as ordinary sandwich wrap. The pilotless, helium-filled balloon carried the 2-ton (1.8-tonne or 1,81 4-kilogram) Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (TIGER) experiment to approximately 125,000 feet (38,000 meters), traveling nearly 8,800 miles (14,000 kilometers) before landing 284 miles (4,460 kilometers) from its launch point in McMurdo Station, Antarctica. NASA had designed TIGER to search for the origin of cosmic rays and their propagation throughout the galaxy. (NASA, “NASA Balloon Makes Record-Breaking Flight,” news release 02-13, 22 January 2002; Warren E. Leary, “Shuttle’s Cameras Offer New Views of the World,” New York Times, 29 January 2002.)
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