NASA Balloon Crashes in Australia

[n2doc]

NASA Balloon Crashes in Australia
Posted on April 29, 2010 | 0 Comments

Gamma ray astronomy took a hit today, when a balloon carrying a NASA telescope toward space crashed back to Earth, sideswiping an SUV, narrowly missing onlookers, and wrecking its rather pricey payload.

The "other" ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, caught video of the failure to launch.

The huge, long-duration balloon was supposed to lift up the Nuclear Compton Telescope, which was designed to look for astrophysical objects that emit gamma rays, the most energetic form of light.

Gamma rays are known to come from supernovae, pulsars, and active supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies—and astronomers think strange flashes called gamma ray bursts could be coming from as-yet unidentified sources.

There are a couple space telescopes in place that map the gamma ray sky, including the most recently launched Fermi mission. But NASA also has a history of using balloon-based instruments to look for gamma rays.
http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/breakingorbit/2010/04/nasa-balloon-crashes-in-austra.html
see link for video. All I can say is, ouch!

[Deep13]

1. Oops.

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