NASA Balloon Campaign Concludes with Final Science Flight

The final mission of NASA’s fall balloon campaign successfully concluded, the reflight of the CORSAIR/WASP. The mission launched from the agency’s facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, after it aborted on Sept. 19.

 The balloon and payload reached a float altitude of around 102,000 feet, and flew for a total of 8 hours, 28 minutes.

CORSAIR is a new science payload to study the Sun’s corona using the Wallops Arc Second Pointer (WASP), a specialized platform that can point scientific instruments at targets during flight at sub-arc-second accuracy. This flight will demonstrate the payload’s capabilities for a potential future Antarctica mission to observe the Sun over one solar rotation, which would take at least 27 days.

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