space balloons!

man on the moon · #1 (**permalink**) 12-December-2003, 12:13 AM

don't have much time right now, it's finals week and i'm just getting over a nasty computer virus. i still can't figure out where half my programs went. (it hid them and such, after it disabled them and rewrote the registry) so i'm a little perturbed and just slightly busy.

this was too interesting though, it is something i hadn't thought of. for the resident physicists here: how would something like this work? is it really as feasible as the article makes it out to be?

oh yeah, almost forgot the link. that wouldn't do! here it is: http://www.msnbc.com/news/1003690.as...1544&cp1=1

Jack Higgins · #2 (**permalink**) 12-December-2003, 12:43 AM

They convieniently forgot to mention (I couldn't see it anyway) that the Russians used balloons on Venus in the 80's..! Ok, so they were completely uncontrolled, with little instrumentation, but they lasted an awful lot longer than the Vega landers they came attached to, and worked pretty well, from what I read!

Vega 1's balloon:

Quote:

In addition to the lander probe, a constant-pressure instrumented balloon aerostat was deployed after entry into the atmosphere from the upper heat protection hemisphere at an altitude of 54 km. The balloon released from the hemisphere, deployed a two-stage parachute, and then unfolded and inflated. The 3.4 meter diameter balloon supported a total mass of 25-kg. A 5-kg payload hung suspended 12 meters below the balloon. It floated at approximately 50 km altitude in the middle, most active layer of the Venus three-tiered cloud system. Data from the balloon instruments were transmitted directly to Earth for the 47-hr lifetime of the mission. (The batteries had a lifetime of 60 hrs.) Onboard instruments were to measure temperature, pressure, vertical wind velocity, visibility (density and size of local aerosols), light level and to detect lightning. Very long baseline interferometry was used to track the motion of the balloon to provide the wind velocity in the clouds. The tracking was to be done by a 6-station network on Soviet territory and by a network of 12 stations distributed world-wide (organized by France and the NASA Deep Space Network). After two days and 9000 km, the balloon entered the dayside of Venus and expanded and burst due to solar heating.

Vega 2's balloon:

Quote:

In addition to the lander probe, a constant-pressure instrumented balloon aerostat was deployed after entry into the atmosphere from the upper heat protection hemisphere at an altitude of 54 km. The balloon released from the hemisphere, deployed a two-stage parachute, and then unfolded and inflated. The 3.4 meter diameter balloon supported a total mass of 25-kg. A 5-kg payload hung suspended 12 meters below the balloon. It floated at approximately 50 km altitude in the middle, most active layer of the Venus three-tiered cloud system. Data from the balloon instruments were transmitted directly to Earth for the 47-hr lifetime of the mission. (The batteries had a lifetime of 60 hrs.) Onboard instruments were to measure temperature, pressure, vertical wind velocity, visibility (density and size of local aerosols), light level and to detect lightning. Very long baseline interferometry was used to track the motion of the balloon to provide the wind velocity in the clouds. The tracking was to be done by a 6-station network on Soviet territory and by a network of 12 stations distributed world-wide (organized by France and the NASA Deep Space Network). After two days the balloon entered the dayside of Venus and expanded and burst due to solar heating.

From http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/...g?sc=1984-125E and http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/...g?sc=1984-128E

And the mission design:

They may have had a terrible government, but the russians sure did some great things in space back then...

(Btw i'm not a physicst, and I wasn't even born when the Vega missions were doing their thing!

)

Jack Higgins · #3 (**permalink**) 12-December-2003, 12:48 AM

Some more good info on Vega:
http://robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/tasks/a...ga_detail.html

man on the moon · #4 (**permalink**) 12-December-2003, 08:26 PM

finals are truly getting to me.

i just tried signing in using my school username and password. (they have been worn out this week if anyone's wondering.)

that didn't work. neither did the hotmail address.

i actually came by because the last outside reading report is due today in physics, and i needed a good article. i saw the title of this thread and thought "huh, sounds neat, lets see".

then i realized I had written the OP.

ops: wow.

anyway, thanks for the info mr higgins. it will be put to good use. (ten points worth in fact!)

tofu · #5 (**permalink**) 12-December-2003, 10:23 PM

you what this reminds me of? A. C. Clarke wrote a short story entitled "A Meeting with Medusa" about exploration of Jupiter by balloon. It was a neat story and had a great ending.

Glutomoto · #6 (**permalink**) 13-December-2003, 07:32 AM

Was the Echo Balloon Satellite the first ?

[br]

http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001896.html

edited to get the BBcode right.

and correct spelling

ops:

Jack Higgins · #7 (**permalink**) 13-December-2003, 02:00 PM

Quote:

Was the Echo Balloon Satellite the first ?

Well, it was probably the first spacecraft to include a balloon, but the vegas were the first real balloons. Echo's ballon wasn't actually used to keep it afloat, only to bounce radio signals off, and it was outside the atmosphere too, whereas without their balloons, vega's would have just been crash landers...

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version Email this Page	Search this Thread: Advanced Search
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode