NASA’s scientific balloon program routinely flies long duration flights during its flight campaigns in Antarctica, Sweden, and New Zealand. These flights are all unique but have a common problem... retrieval of the very large volumes of raw, unprocessed scientific data often collected over the course of these long duration flights. Current datalinks used by NASA for scientific balloons generally only have the bandwidth necessary to downlink data that’s been highly processed on-board to fit into these limited links, leaving the raw, Level 0 science data to be retrieved once the mission ends and the balloon flight is terminated. Scientists require the raw data to support further, more refined analysis. Unfortunately, payload retrieval is not always guaranteed in the inhospitable places these balloons traverse (Antarctica, the Southern Ocean, and far northern latitudes), and when it is possible, may not occur until the following year or later.

On completion of this effort, the NS3’s operational envelope will be expanded from the former HASS ceiling of 90kft to the required Data Buoy operational altitude.

NASA’s long duration balloon platforms and other government programs seeking to leverage high-altitude balloons or requiring access to very high altitudes.