NASA’s Super-TIGER Balloon Breaks Record of Heavy Lift Scientific Balloon

NASA's Super-TIGER balloon, a large science balloon, has set a record for the longest flight of its kind carrying an instrument that had the capacity to detect 50 million cosmic rays.

On completing 55 days, 1 hour and 34 minutes at an altitude of 127,000 feet, it broke the 2009 record that was sent by NASA's Super pressure balloon test flight that managed to spend 54 days, 1 hour, and 29 minutes. The altitude at which the TIGER balloon was flying over the Antarctica was more than four times the altitude of most commercial airliners. The winds at the South Pole helped it stay aloft for such a long duration.

The mission that was managed by Washington University of St Louis ended Friday, when the balloon was brought down. It returned with an excess of data that was collected by the instrument the Super-TIGER carried. This data will help in understanding the mechanism behind the production of energetic atomic nuclei and the source of their high energy.

The instrument could measure unique heavy elements that were heavier than iron present in the flux of high energy cosmic rays that bombard the Earth from unknown points in the Milky Way galaxy.

It was Jan. 24 that the Super-TIGER set a record for being the longest flight by a balloon of its size flying for 46 days. On the day of landing, it set another record for being the longest flight of any heavy lift scientific balloon, including NASA's Long Duration Balloons. 

"Scientific balloons give scientists the ability to gather critical science data for a long duration at a very low relative cost," Vernon Jones, NASA's Balloon Program scientist, said in a press statement. "Super-TIGER is scientific ballooning at its best."