Fall Program Kicks Off At Fort Sumner

NASA’s schedule of high-altitude balloon launches has commenced at Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

For more than thirty years the NASA Balloon Program has provided high-altitude platforms for technological and scientific investigations that have yielded information fundamental to our understanding of Earth, the solar system, and the universe. The fall campaign will conduct launches from mid-August through mid-October.

Eight balloon flights from NASA’s Fort Sumner balloon launch site in eastern New Mexico will transport 16 missions including experiments and technology demonstrations in heliophysics, astrophysics, and atmospheric research.

Andrew Hamilton, acting chief of NASA’s Balloon Program Office said, “The annual Fort Sumner campaign is the cornerstone of the NASA Balloon Program operations. Not only are we launching a large number of missions, but these flights set the foundation for follow-on missions from our long-duration launch facilities in Antarctica, New Zealand, and Sweden. The Fort Sumner campaign is also a strong focus for our student-based payloads and is an excellent training opportunity for our up-and-coming scientists and engineers.”

This year’s schedule will include a mission that was delayed in 2023 due to weather conditions, the EXCITE (Exoplanet Climate Infrared Telescope) mission led by principal investigator Peter Nagler, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. EXCITE is an astronomical telescope to study the properties of atmospheres of Jupiter-like exoplanets. The full schedule of flights can be seen at the link below.

FMI:  www.nasa.gov/