Bonn 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik
EP 3: Poster
EP 3.1: Poster
Montag, 15. März 2010, 17:45–19:00, AKM Foyer
In-situ exploration of plaetary atmospheres with balloons — •Michael Danielides1, Jaime Esper2, Georg Herdrich3, Klaus Bayler1, and Hannes Griebel1 — 1Mars Society Germany — 2NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USA — 3Institute of Space Systems, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Balloon missions have been used extensively on Earth to study a large variety of atmospheric characteristics and phenomena. Of primary interest are in situ temperature, pressure and density profiles and wind velocities. The first planetary balloons were flown in the mid 1980s with the Vega 1 and 2 missions to Venus. Since then, balloons have been further planed for Mars and Titan. The aim of this presentation is to provide a brief overview of the current state in scientific ballooning, and in particular show existing data obtained through the MIRIAM (Main Inflated Re-entry Into the Atmosphere Mission Test) Mars balloon near space deployment experiments. The test ballute MIRIAM was flown on board a REXUS 4 sounding rocket from ESRANGE in northern Sweden on October 22nd, 2008. The balloon was deployed at about 140 km altitude. On board were optical instruments, magnetometers, temperature sensors and barometers for atmospheric studies. The data gathered during decent was used to validate inflation and deployment concepts, planetary balloon technologies. The new ballute probe MIRIAM-2 is under construction. It will record atmospheric parameters which will be then compared to Earth upper atmospheric models. Finally, future prospects for balloon use on Mars and Titan will be addressed and discussed.