ASTHROS Mission- NASA to Use Football Stadium-sized Balloon to Study Cosmos

Business Standard ASTHROS Mission: NASA to use football stadium-sized balloon to study Cosmos

Likely to be launched in December 2023 from Antarctica, ASTHROS will spend about three weeks drifting on air currents above the icy southern continent.

NASA has started work on a new mission to send a telescope, on a football stadium-sized balloon, high into the stratosphere to observe wavelengths of light invisible from the Earth. The mission will try to find answers about formation of giant stars in the galaxy.

The telescope mission called Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths (ASTHROS) is likely to be launched in December 2023 from Antarctica. It will spend about three weeks drifting on air currents above the icy southern continent, said the American space agency on Wednesday.

Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ASTHROS will observe far-infrared light, or light with wavelengths much longer than what is visible to the human eye at an altitude of about 130,000 feet (40 km) roughly four times higher than commercial airliners fly. The balloon included a telescope, science instruments, and subsystems such as the cooling and electronic systems. Engineers at JPL will begin the integration and testing of those subsystems in August.

In a statement, NASA said, "Scientific Balloon Program has been operating for 30 years. It launches 10 to 15 missions a year from locations around the globe in support of experiments across all of NASA's science disciplines, as well as for technology development and education purposes. Balloon missions don't only have lower costs compared to space missions, they also have shorter times between early planning and deployment, which means they can accept the higher risks associated with using new or state-of-the-art technologies that haven't yet flown in space."