* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Mars Environment Analogue Platform

Blobrana · L

At 7:07 local time on Saturday (28 June) a large balloon-borne experiment called MEAP took off from SSC:s launch facility Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden. The aim of the flight is to perform tests of new techniques connected to the flight itself and to the new mass spectrometer planned to be used in the future on space flights to other planets.
The gondola was lifted by a large balloon of 334.000 m3 (100 m in diameter) and reached the predicted altitude of 36 km within 2 hours. After 5-6 days the payload will be cut off from the balloon and descend under a parachute to land in the northern parts of Canada or Alaska. The payload will be recovered by helicopter after landing.

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Blobrana · L

From Mars to the Earth and back is the theme when the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF), the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) and University of Bern in Switzerland build and launch a mass spectrometer on a stratospheric balloon from SSCs operational facility Esrange Space Centre in Kiruna. The project is called MEAP (Mars Environment Analogue Platform) and will be carried out during the summer of 2008. MEAP is a test mission to try out new technology (the mass spectrometer P-BACE, Polar Balloon Atmospheric Composition Experiment), which has primarily been developed to conduct a number of measurements on Mars during forthcoming missions. The test project MEAP will be carried out in the Earths stratosphere, an environment that has many similarities to the conditions at the surface of Mars.

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