An aerobot is an aerial robot, usually used in the context of an unmanned space probe or unmanned aerial vehicle.
Auguste Antoine Piccard was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer known for his record-breaking hydrogen balloon flights, with which he studied the Earth's upper atmosphere and became the first person to enter the Stratosphere. Piccard was also known for his invention of the first bathyscaphe, FNRS-2, with which he made a number of unmanned dives in 1948 to explore the ocean's depths.
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.
Project Excelsior was a series of parachute jumps made by Joseph Kittinger of the United States Air Force in 1959 and 1960 from helium balloons in the stratosphere. The purpose was to test the Beaupre multi-stage parachute system intended to be used by pilots ejecting from high altitude. In one of these jumps Kittinger set world records for the longest parachute drogue fall, the highest parachute jump, and the fastest speed by a human through the atmosphere. He held the latter two of these records for 52 years, until they were broken by Felix Baumgartner of the Red Bull Stratos project in 2012, though he still holds the world record for longest time in free fall.
High-altitude balloons or stratostats are usually uncrewed balloons typically filled with helium or hydrogen and released into the stratosphere, generally attaining between 18 and 37 km above sea level. In 2013, a balloon named BS 13-08 reached a record altitude of 53.7 km.
Explorer II was a crewed U.S. high-altitude balloon that was launched on November 11, 1935, and reached a record altitude of 22,066 m (72,395 ft). Launched at 8:00 am from the Stratobowl in South Dakota, the helium balloon carried a two-man crew consisting of U. S. Army Air Corps Captains Albert W. Stevens and Orvil A. Anderson inside a sealed, spherical cabin. The crew landed safely near White Lake, South Dakota, at 4:13 pm and both were acclaimed as national heroes. Scientific instruments carried on the gondola returned useful information about the stratosphere. The mission was funded by the membership of the National Geographic Society.
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), established in 1961 and formerly known as the National Scientific Balloon Facility (NSBF), 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.
Romanian Cosmonautics and Aeronautics Association, also known as ARCAspace, is an aerospace company based in Râmnicu Vâlcea, Romania. It builds rockets, high-altitude balloons, and unmanned aerial vehicles. It was founded in 1999 as a non-governmental organization in Romania by the Romanian engineer and entrepreneur Dumitru Popescu and other rocket and aeronautics enthusiasts. Since then, ARCA has launched two stratospheric rockets and four large-scale stratospheric balloons including a cluster balloon. It was awarded two governmental contracts with the Romanian government and one contract with the European Space Agency. ARCASpace is currently developing a three-stage, semi-reusable steam-powered rocket called EcoRocket and in 2022 has shifted its business model to Asteroid mining. Arca have yet to launch a vehicle above the Karman line, or sent a payload to orbit, with the majority of their projects having been abandoned before completing the demonstrator phase.
Balloons and kites were the first inventions used in aerial warfare and their primary role was reconnaissance. Balloons provided an unreliable and stable means of elevating an observer high over the battlefield to obtain a birds-eye view of troop positions and movements. An early instrument of aerial intelligence collection, they were also useful for creating accurate battlefield maps, an important ingredient for battlefield success. Incendiary balloons also have a long history. The incendiary balloons carry hot air or something that can catch fire to destroy enemy territory. They could also hold small bombs for combat. The history of military ballooning dates back to the late 18th century, when the Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne, first demonstrated the potential of hot-air balloons for military use. The first recorded military use of balloons was during the French Revolutionary Wars, when the French military used balloons to gather intelligence on the movements of the enemy. Balloons were also used during the American Civil War, where they were used for reconnaissance and communication. Balloons had a decline after several incidents in the interwar period.
Jane Poynter is an American aerospace executive, author and speaker. She is founder, co-CEO and CXO of Space Perspective, a luxury space travel company. She was co-founder and former CEO of World View Enterprises, a private near-space exploration and technology company headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. Poynter was also a founding member of the Biosphere 2 design team and a crew member from the original two-year mission inside the materially closed ecological system.
This listing of flight altitude records are the records set for the highest aeronautical flights conducted in the atmosphere, set since the age of ballooning.
Paragon Space Development Corporation is an American company headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. Paragon is a provider of environmental controls for extreme and hazardous environments. They design, build, test and operate life-support systems and leading thermal-control products for astronauts, contaminated water divers, and other extreme environment explorers, as well as for uncrewed space and terrestrial applications.
The Global horizontal sounding technique (GHOST) program was an atmospheric field research project in the late 1960s for investigating the technical ability to gather weather data using hundreds of simultaneous long-duration balloons for very long-range global scale numerical weather prediction in preparation for the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP).
Raven Industries, Inc. is an American company that makes precision agriculture products and information management tools for growers. Before a series of acquisitions in 2021, it also had an Engineered Films segment that produced plastic films for various agricultural and industrial applications, as well as an Aerostar segment that designed and manufactured high-altitude balloons, tethered aerostats, and radar systems, and sold military parachutes, uniforms, and protective wear. The company was founded in 1956 and headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Its stock was traded on Nasdaq until 2021 when it was acquired by CNH Industrial.
World View Enterprises, Inc., doing business as World View, is a private American near space exploration and technology company headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, founded with the goal of increasing access to and the utilization of the stratosphere for scientific, commercial, economic, and military purposes.
Robert Alan Eustace is an American computer scientist who served as Senior Vice President of Engineering and first Senior Vice President for Knowledge at Google until retiring in 2015. On October 24, 2014, he made a free-fall jump from the stratosphere, breaking Felix Baumgartner's world record. The jump was from 135,890 feet (41.42 km) and lasted 15 minutes, an altitude record that stands as of 2024. He won the Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year in 2015.
Zero 2 Infinity is a private Spanish company developing high-altitude balloons intended to provide access to near space and low Earth orbit using a balloon-borne pod and a balloon-borne launcher.
Deimos-One is an American spaceflight technology development company working on an AI powered, autonomous UAV rocket system to move payloads to space. As of January 2021, the company has completed a successful prototype test flight, reaching an altitude of 30 km (19 mi).
On October 24, 2014, Alan Eustace broke the record for the highest stratosphere jump, releasing himself from a balloon at 135,908 feet.
