From late May through mid-July, instruments aboard four NASA scientific balloons collected data on cosmic rays, clouds, the Sun’s magnetic field, and more. Launched from Kiruna, Sweden, the balloons and their payloads were retrieved from locations across northern Canada after flights lasting three to seven days.
NASA’s balloon program has sent scientific experiments into the stratosphere for more than 30 years and currently flies 10–15 balloons per year. Since the program’s establishment, balloons continue to reach ever-higher altitudes.
One attraction of balloons is the price tag: Whereas the cost of space missions rises into the tens of millions to billions of dollars, balloons average a few million dollars apiece, says the acting chief of NASA’s Balloon Program Office, Andrew Hamilton. They also provide a stable platform to test new technologies for later use on space missions. The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, a photon-detecting satellite launched in 1991, for example,...
