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Pietro Bernasconi
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SBI-2 Long Duration Balloon Flight from Antarctica 2006/2007

Launch location:  Williams Filed, McMurdo Antarctica
Launch date:  December 25, 2006 at 3:55 UT
Termination:  December 25, 2006 at approximatey 9 UT
Flight duration:  5 hours
Average float altitude:  Reached 127,000 ft (~38.5 Km)
Impact location:  Ross Ice Shelf, approximately 50 miles N of Williams Field
Comments:  Flight prematurely terminated due to unrecoverable hardware failure

green bullet An overview of the mission can be found in this presentation given at the 2004 Fall AGU Meeting in San Francisco [PDF 2.2 MB].

Check earlier posted news in the News Archive

Latest News

Posted on: February 09, 2007:

green bullet With the support from CSBF and NSF we were able to recover all the componets of the SBI gondola. The instrument is in good condition, including the telescope and the solar panels. The gondola frame and the bulk of the support equipment has been loaded on the support cargo shib bound to the U.S.
We expect the gondola to be back at APL by early April 2007.

green bullet The four pressure vessels containing all the compures and the data storage hard drives was sent back to the U.S. via commercial cargo an we expect them to be back at APL by mid February 2007. As soon as the computers are back we will start investigating the causes of the faliure that cause a premature termination of the mission.