NASA crash destroys multimillion payload; goes down just seconds after takeoff
44 replies, posted
[URL="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/space/SIG=grdpua/*http://www.SPACE.com/"] [IMG]http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/nws/p/space_logo_140.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
View [URL="http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100429/sc_space/hugenasascienceballooncrashesinaustralianoutback"]the full article[/URL] for the video of the crash.
[release][B]STORY HIGHLIGHTS[/B]
[LIST]
[*]A balloon carrying telescopes that took years to build goes down just seconds after takeoff.
[*] It was intended to scan the sky at wavelengths invisible to the human eye
[*]The crashing balloon just missed nearby onlookers
[/LIST]
[/release][quote=Yahoo! News]
A huge NASA balloon loaded with a telescope painstakingly built to scan the sky at wavelengths invisible to the human eye crashed in the Australian outback Thursday, [B]destroying the astronomy experiment and just missing nearby onlookers, according to Australian media reports.
[/B]
In dramatic video released by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the giant 400-foot (121-meter) balloon is seen just beginning to lift its payload, then the telescope gondola appears to unexpectedly come loose from its carriage. The telescope crashes through a fence and overturn a nearby parked sport utility vehicle before finally stopping.
The attempted balloon telescope launch took place at the Alice Springs Balloon Launching Centre, near the town of Alice Springs, in the northern territory of Australia.
The wayward balloon overturned one car, but missed another parked nearby with local Alice Springs couple Stan and Betty Davies, who had come to watch the launch, still inside.
[B]"We were sitting in our car and preparing to move it out of the way and we were actually about a foot of being wiped out,[/B]" ABC quoted Davies as saying.
[B]The balloon was carrying the Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT), a gamma-ray telescope built by astronomer Steven Boggs and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, California to study astrophysical sources in space.
[/B]
"Today was a terrible day for a lot of people," wrote Eric Bellm, a graduate astronomy student at the UC Berkeley, in a blog chronicling the science mission. "For the NCT team, we've poured our hearts into this instrument for years. It was an almost unfathomable shock to find ourselves cleaning up the wreckage of our gondola rather than watching it lift off towards space."
The unmanned research balloon was built by NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in [B]Palestine, Texas[/B] and expected to haul its two-telescope payload up to an altitude of about 120,000 feet (36,576 meters). That's about 23 miles (37 km), though smaller home-built balloons have been built to reach high altitudes as well.
In his account of the crash, Bellm said an investigation into the balloon's launch failure will be performed, though a first glance found that at least some of the components for the Nuclear Compton Telescope appear to have survived relatively intact. The science team has cleaned up the wreckage and returned it to a staging hangar, he added.
Ravi Sood, director of the Alice Springs Balloon Launching Centre and a professor at Australia's University of New South Wales, said no one was hurt in the incident, but sometimes balloon launches can go awry.
"Ballooning, that's the way it happens on occasions but it is very, very disappointing. Gut-wrenching actually," he told ABC.
The failed balloon launch in Australia marked NASA's second balloon science campaign this month at the remote site. On April 15, NASA's balloon science program launched Tracking and Imaging Gamma Ray Experiment (TIGRE), a gamma-ray telescope, to search the galactic center of the sky for emissions from radioactive materials, NASA officials said.
[B]That launch, which sent the telescope and its balloon to an altitude of 127,000 feet (38,709 meters), went according to plan, the space agency said.[/B]
The balloon's next payload to fly, an X-ray telescope called HERO aimed at mapping the galactic center for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, was targeted for May, Australian officials added.[/quote]
[IMG]http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/8443/71396703.png[/IMG]
so we can send people to the moon but we can't make a balloon float...
NASA cannot into space
And this is, children, why you don't use balloons to take shit into orbit.
Well balloons are easily burst and shit so why use balloons?
I think I just died a little on the inside when I saw the video...
I love the amateurs who can launch balloons with a video camera in styrofoam and get stunning pictures but NASA fails with the best equipment.
-snip-
Yeah...uh...Balloons are for children's parties, NOT taking million dollar cameras into space.
I expected an explosion, I am disappoint
[QUOTE=starpluck;21632858]
[IMG]http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/8443/71396703.png[/IMG][/QUOTE]
I want that guy dead.
I know I will be hated for this no matter what, but I don't care.
I save that phrase for the really sparse occasions like this.
[highlight]Epic Fail.[/highlight]
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;21633491]I know I will be hated for this no matter what, but I don't care.
I save that phrase for the really sparse occasions like this.
[highlight]Epic Fail.[/highlight][/QUOTE]
It doesn't matter that you never use it, those two words have lost all meaning in my mind.
I suppose the checkpoint was on the ground.
Hur hur clever TF2 joke. :downs:
Great job NASA, that really clears your reputation of fucking up just about everything you try and send into space.
Pictures from homemade payloads launched by weather balloons:
[img]http://teenymanolo.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/bearsinspace.jpg[/img]
[img]https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/vusm-blogs/sites/medschool.vanderbilt.edu.vusm-blogs/files/u6/balloon%20small.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.ashtontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/500x__150Balloon2.jpg[/img]
Such a project costs around 150$.
Fuck it, we still have Hubble. And Kepler.
Wow...Just wow.
snip
The heavy probably sat on it instead of pushing it.
[IMG]http://blog.martincrownover.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/tf2_engineer_closeup.jpg[/IMG]
[I]Gotta move that gear up![/I]
[QUOTE=CanadianBill;21636455]^ No[/QUOTE]
What? They didn't get the payload to its destination :v:
NASA is full of incompetents, I am seriously ashamed of my country for this
I bet they didn't see that one coming.
[QUOTE=Jzzb;21636654]NASA is full of incompetents, I am seriously ashamed of my country for this[/QUOTE]
They are just poor as piss nowadays because nobody gives two shits about space.
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;21637174]They are just poor as piss nowadays because nobody gives two shits about space.[/QUOTE]
The great obama cut funding for NASA didn't he? I could be wrong
Australia will ban this, that simple.
[QUOTE=TheChantzGuy;21637294]The great obama cut funding for NASA didn't he? I could be wrong[/QUOTE]
No, he eliminated the Constellation project and the shuttle program, then increased their funding. (I don't get it either)
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