Long Duration Balloon Launch
LDB Camp Office
LDB Galley
A few miles from McMurdo on the ice shelf is the Long Duration Balloon facility, known as LDB. Funded by NASA, 2-3 balloon launches per year are done from Antarctica. The balloons this year are carrying payloads of around 5000 pounds and rise past 99% of our atmosphere. Compared to launching a satellite this is a huge cost savings, but it’s still a complex enough task that I’m told it has it’s own line on the national budget!
Payload Building
CREAM
The facility consists mainly of 2 large payload buildings for assembly of the large scientific instruments attached to the balloons, a rigging building where the launch technicians prepare, and a communications and tracking building for monitoring the position and status of the balloons after they launch.
BLAST
BLAST computers and liquid helium
The balloons are inflated with helium, and as they rise through the atmosphere they continue to expand as the pressure in the air decreases. What’s amazing is that in the end the balloon will expand to the same approximate volume as the Houston Astrodome! The balloon itself is only 0.02 millimeters thick. Think about how strong a balloon that large would need to be to inflate and launch without tearing to pieces.
BLAST shielding
The Boss
The launch procedure itself is interesting. The payload is hung from a customized vehicle called The Boss. The balloon is inflated on the opposite side of the launch pad, which is a huge circular area of snow that our Fleet Operations crew spends thousands of hours building for months in advance of the launch (compacting and grooming the snow so it is strong enough). The Boss is well over 100,000 pounds, so you can imagine that the snow surface needs to be very strong for it to drive around without any rutting or sinking on the pad.
The Boss doing a hang test with the BLAST payload
Balloon inflated, with The Boss on the opposite end of the pad
The Boss has the most critical job on the launch: As soon as the balloon is released, it will rise into the air and take up all the slack between it and the payload. Any winds can change the position the balloon goes to. The boss has to react immediately and perfectly to drive itself so that once all the slack is taken up the payload is directly beneath the balloon when it is released. If not, you can imagine it like a pendulum – the payload will drag across the pad, causing a lot of damage. Something like this actually happened in Australia last year.
But it’s important to know that only 4 percent of launches fail and usually in much less spectacular ways. A few days ago I was lucky enough to be in an ideal place to see the first balloon launch of the year, carrying the CREAM payload. Spectators have to be 3km away, but I still got a pretty good look and it seemed like a flawless launch by the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility staff.
Payload released
