Research balloons are balloons that are used for scientific research. They are usually unmanned, filled with a lighter-than-air gas like helium, and fly at high altitudes.
Meteorology, atmospheric research, astronomy, and military research may be conducted from a research balloon. Weather balloons are a type of research balloon. Research balloons usually study a single aspect of science, such as air pollution, air temperature, or wind currents, although sometimes several experiments or equipment are flown together.
Other than weather balloons, few research balloons are launched every year. This is driven by the large cost of the balloon, the instrument, which is usually custom made, and the cost of the launch. Because of the altitude reached by most research balloons, the air is too thin and too cold for humans to survive, therefore most research balloons are unmanned and operated remotely. There have been some balloons equipped with pressurized cabins, beginning with professor Auguste Piccard in the 1930s.
Research balloons are not only used on earth. With the help of a research balloon, the upper atmosphere of Venus was examined by the Vega program.
An aircraft is a vehicle or machine that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines. Common examples of aircraft include airplanes, helicopters, airships, gliders, paramotors, and hot air balloons.
Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies the aspects of "aeronautical Art, Science and Engineering" and "The profession of Aeronautics ."
A hot-air balloon is a lighter-than-air aircraft consisting of a bag, called an envelope, which contains heated air. Suspended beneath is a gondola or wicker basket, which carries passengers and a source of heat, in most cases an open flame caused by burning liquid propane. The heated air inside the envelope makes it buoyant, since it has a lower density than the colder air outside the envelope. As with all aircraft, hot-air balloons cannot fly beyond the atmosphere. The envelope does not have to be sealed at the bottom, since the air inside the envelope is at about the same pressure as the surrounding air. In modern sport balloons the envelope is generally made from nylon fabric, and the inlet of the balloon is made from a fire-resistant material such as Nomex. Modern balloons have been made in many shapes, such as rocket ships and the shapes of various commercial products, though the traditional shape is used for most non-commercial and many commercial applications.
Unpowered aircraft can remain airborne for a significant period of time without onboard propulsion. They can be classified as fixed-wing gliders, lighter-than-air balloons and tethered kites. This requires a trajectory that is not merely a vertical descent such as a parachute. In the case of kites, lift is obtained by tethering to a fixed or moving object, perhaps another kite, to obtain a flow of wind over the lifting surfaces. In the case of balloons, lift is obtained through inherent buoyancy and the balloon may or may not be tethered. Free balloon flight has little directional control. Gliding aircraft include sailplanes, hang gliders, and paragliders that have full directional control in free flight.
Project Mogul was a top secret project by the US Army Air Forces involving microphones flown on high-altitude balloons, whose primary purpose was long-distance detection of sound waves generated by Soviet atomic bomb tests. The project was carried out from 1947 until early 1949. It was a classified portion of an unclassified project by New York University (NYU) atmospheric researchers. The project was moderately successful, but was very expensive and was superseded by a network of seismic detectors and air sampling for fallout, which were cheaper, more reliable, and easier to deploy and operate.
An aerobot is an aerial robot, usually used in the context of an unmanned space probe or unmanned aerial vehicle.
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or uncrewed aerial vehicle, commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which include additionally a ground-based controller and a system of communications with the UAV. The flight of UAVs may operate under remote control by a human operator, as remotely-piloted aircraft (RPA), or with various degrees of autonomy, such as autopilot assistance, up to fully autonomous aircraft that have no provision for human intervention.
A weather balloon, also known as sounding balloon, is a balloon that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems. Balloons meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time are known as transosondes. Weather balloons that do not carry an instrument pack are used to determine upper-level winds and the height of cloud layers. For such balloons, a theodolite or total station is used to track the balloon's azimuth and elevation, which are then converted to estimated wind speed and direction and/or cloud height, as applicable.
A radiosonde is a battery-powered telemetry instrument carried into the atmosphere usually by a weather balloon that measures various atmospheric parameters and transmits them by radio to a ground receiver. Modern radiosondes measure or calculate the following variables: altitude, pressure, temperature, relative humidity, wind, cosmic ray readings at high altitude and geographical position (latitude/longitude). Radiosondes measuring ozone concentration are known as ozonesondes.
A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to carry instruments from 48 to 145 km above the surface of the Earth, the altitude generally between weather balloons and satellites; the maximum altitude for balloons is about 40 km and the minimum for satellites is approximately 121 km. Certain sounding rockets have an apogee between 1,000 and 1,500 km, such as the Black Brant X and XII, which is the maximum apogee of their class. Sounding rockets often use military surplus rocket motors. NASA routinely flies the Terrier Mk 70 boosted Improved Orion, lifting 270–450-kg (600–1,000-pound) payloads into the exoatmospheric region between 97 and 201 km.
In aeronautics, a balloon is an unpowered aerostat, which remains aloft or floats due to its buoyancy. A balloon may be free, moving with the wind, or tethered to a fixed point. It is distinct from an airship, which is a powered aerostat that can propel itself through the air in a controlled manner.
High-altitude balloons are crewed or uncrewed balloons, usually filled with helium or hydrogen, that are released into the stratosphere, generally attaining between 18 and 37 km above sea level. In 2002, a balloon named BU60-1 reached a record altitude of 53.0 km.
A gas balloon is a balloon that rises and floats in the air because it is filled with a gas lighter than air. When not in flight, it is tethered to prevent it from flying away and is sealed at the bottom to prevent the escape of gas. A gas balloon may also be called a Charlière for its inventor, the Frenchman Jacques Charles. Today, familiar gas balloons include large blimps and small latex party balloons. For nearly 200 years, well into the 20th century, manned balloon flight utilized gas balloons before hot-air balloons became dominant. Without power, heat or fuel, untethered flights of gas balloons depended on the skill of the pilot. Gas balloons have greater lift for a given volume, so they do not need to be so large, and they can stay up for much longer than hot air balloons.
The Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) is a NASA facility responsible for providing launch, tracking and control, airspace coordination, telemetry and command systems, and recovery services for unmanned high-altitude balloons. Customers of the CSBF include NASA centers, universities, and scientific groups from all over the world.
JP Aerospace is an American company that aims to achieve affordable access to space. Their main activities include high-atmospheric lighter-than-air flights carrying cameras or miniature experiments called pongsats and minicubes. They are also engaged in an Airship to Orbit project.
Skyhook balloons were high-altitude balloons developed by Otto C. Winzen and General Mills, Inc. They were used by the United States Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) in the late 1940s and 1950s for atmospheric research, especially for constant-level meteorological observations at very high altitudes. Instruments like the Cherenkov detector were first used on Skyhook balloons.
Hot air ballooning is the activity of flying hot air balloons. Attractive aspects of ballooning include the exceptional quiet, the lack of a feeling of movement, and the bird's-eye view. Since the balloon moves with the direction of the winds, the passengers feel absolutely no wind, except for brief periods during the flight when the balloon climbs or descends into air currents of different direction or speed. Hot air ballooning has been recognized by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) as the safest air sport in aviation, and fatalities in hot air balloon accidents are rare, according to statistics from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
A sky anchor is a system of two balloons in tandem, with a "zero-pressure" lifting gas balloon tethered to a superpressure balloon "anchor". The gas balloon is filled with a lifting gas and provides the buoyancy, while the superpressure balloon is filled with air, and pressurized to provide the desired ballast weight. In a passive sky anchor, the superpressure balloon is sealed, while in an active system, its pressure can be varied. Both versions have been tested in flight, but have had frequent failures with only occasional successful outcomes. The tandem arrangement makes launching difficult, and this complexity can lead to mission failure.
Atmospheric satellite or pseudo-satellite is a marketing term for an aircraft that operates in the atmosphere at high altitudes for extended periods of time, in order to provide services conventionally provided by an artificial satellite orbiting in space.
The Berlin scientific balloon flights were a series of 65 manned and 29 unmanned balloon flights carried out between 1888 and 1899 by the German Society for the Promotion of Aeronautics to investigate the atmosphere above the planetary boundary layer. The flights were organized by Richard Aßmann, Professor at the Meteorological Institute of Berlin, who also developed the most important of the measurement instruments employed by them. The execution lay primarily in the hands of the military airship pilot Hans Groß and the meteorologist Arthur Berson. In 1894, Berson flew with the balloon Phönix to a height of 9155 meters, the highest that any human had flown until then.
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