BRRISON

The Balloon Rapid Response for ISON (BRRISON) was a NASA project involving a stratospheric balloon with science instruments intended to study comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) and other celestial objects.

Construction

The balloon featured an azimuth and attitude stabilized gondola carrying an 80-centimeter (31 in) telescope and two instruments on separate optical benches.^[1][2] The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory contributed the BRRISON Infrared Camera (BIRC) for detecting water and carbon dioxide at 2.5 to 5 μm.^[1][3] The Southwest Research Institute provided the Ultraviolet-Visible light camera (UVVis) with a fine steering mirror to detect hydroxyl (308 nm) and cyanogen (385 nm) emissions.^[1][3] To save time, both the telescope and gondola avionics were refurbished from JHU/APL's Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory mission.^[4][5] The BRRISON payload was intended to operate at 36,600 meters (120,000 ft) for up to 22 hours.^[6] The mission cost US$10.2 million, excluding the balloon and NASA personnel expenses,^[4] and progressed from concept to launch pad in ten months.^[6]

Mission

While Comet ISON was the primary target, this mission also planned to observe other objects, including comet 2P/Encke, Jupiter and its moons, the Mizar star system, Earth's Moon, and asteroids 10 Hygiea and 130 Elektra.^[7] Another goal was to measure Earth's atmospheric transmission and emission using BIRC and atmospheric turbulence using UVVis.^[8]

Launch

The balloon was launched from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on 28 September 2013 at 18:10 MDT (29 September 2013 at 00:10 UTC).^[5][7] However, about two and a half hours after launch,^[9] a communication interruption between hardware caused the telescope to return to its stowed position too rapidly, resulting in the stow bar being trapped.^[10] Team members worked to fix the problem, but the telescope was unable to be redeployed.^[9] The decision was made to keep the balloon afloat until it reached a safe location for mission termination, which occurred on 29 September at 06:04 MDT (12:04 UTC).^[5] The gondola and its payload was released under parachute and recovered near Spur, Texas,^[5] in "excellent condition".^[11] The hardware may be reused on future balloon missions.^[12]

References

Bibliography

• Kremic, Tibor; Cheng, Andrew (2014). "Planetary Science from Stratospheric Balloons, BRRISON Mission Overview, and Potential 2014 Re-flight Options". 10th Meeting of the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group. 8–9 January 2014. Washington, D.C.. 09-1100. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/sbag/meetings/jan2014/presentations/09_1100_Kremic_Planetary_Balloons_SBAG.pdf. 
• Landis, Rob (18 September 2013). "BRRISON Overview". NASA Planetary Science Division. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/smallworlds/docs/BRRISON_Landis_PSD.pdf. 

External links

• BRRISON at NASA Solar System Exploration
• BRRISON: First Planetary Balloon Mission in 50 Years, document at NASA Solar System Exploration
• BRRISON Mission Archive at the NASA Planetary Data System, Small Bodies Node

0.00 (0 votes) Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRRISON. Read more