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Neutrinos on Ice: Launching the Balloon
By Katie Mulrey | January 7, 2015 |
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
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Physics Week in Review:
January 10, 2014
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The balloon launch vehicle, a.k.a. “The Boss”. (Credit: Jarred Roberts)
Editor’s Note: Welcome to ANITA, the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna! From
October to December, Katie Mulrey is traveling with the ANITA collaboration to
Antarctica to build and launch ANITA III, a scientific balloon that uses the entire
continent of Antarctica for neutrino and cosmic ray detection. This is the sixth
installment in a series, “Neutrinos on Ice,” documenting that effort.
Launch day finally arrived. The winds were low, and the forecasts were promising for
a great neutrino-detecting balloon launch. This was ANITA’s sixth attempt at
launching. Everyone was more than ready to bid the balloon farewell. Until the
balloon and payload are airborne, the scientific team has little to do on launch day.
The launch is in the hands of the CSBF rigging, electronics and weather teams.
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Physics Week in Review: January 10, 2014
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Balloon laid out and waiting for helium. (Credit: Christian Miki)
The balloon is launched from a huge vehicle named “The Boss,” behind which
everything necessary for flight is laid out in a long line. First you have The Boss
holding the payload on a crane. Next comes a parachute that will be used to bring the
payload back down to the ground when the flight is over. Attached to the parachute is
the balloon (seen in a pink wrapper in the image above). The balloon is made out of a
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material similar to a plastic grocery bag, so it is very delicate! Once it is taken out of
the wrapper there is no going back, because trying to repack the balloon might cause
some damage. We were waiting for the news that the wrapper had been opened. Then
we knew launch was immanent.
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The tip of the balloon is filled with helium. (Credit: Christian Miki)
Only the tip of the balloon is filled with helium. That is enough to lift the two-ton
ANITA to 36 kilometers, where it will take data. The entire balloon will inflate to the
size of a football field once the balloon rises to lower density atmosphere. Helium is
inserted into the balloon through two long plastic tubes that get tied off after the
correct amount is added. That balloon can lift the whole payload, so a lot of work goes
into keeping it on the ground before the launch.
Fresh Start for an Extinct Cat?
ANITA launching. (Credit: Christian Miki)
At launch time, The Boss starts driving the balloon and payload in the direction of the
wind. It lets go of the payload and the balloon begins to rise in the air. The timing is
very hard to get right! If you hold the payload too long the balloon will pull too hard
and could tear. Too early, and you drop the payload onto the snow. Talk about
exciting! There was a lot of cheering as we watched the balloon float away.
Now it’s data time. There are hard
drives on ANITA that are
constantly writing data, but we
can’t access that until the flight is
over, and then only if the payload
can be recovered. (In some cases
the payload will fall into water or
be covered with snow, so we can’t
get it.) We record lots of radio
signal data, only a small fraction
of which is really a neutrino or
cosmic ray. We send down data
we think might be really
important via satellite. At the
beginning of the flight we also
Flight Path of ANITA so far. (Credit: NASA/CSBF)
have “line of sight” access to the
balloon, meaning we can talk
directly to the instrument with
radio communication before the
balloon goes over the horizon.
After that we rely solely on
satellite communication. ANITA
collaborators watch the data
stream 24/7 to see if everything
working properly. We monitor the
temperature of the instrument,
voltage and current levels, and
Sample ANITA signal. The vertical axis is Voltage and the
horizontal axis is time in nanoseconds. (Credit: Abigail Vieregg)
plots of the radio data coming in.
If the signals from our 48 antennas match up in the right way, we know we have a
neutrino! We spend months after the flight carefully analyzing the data to be sure we
know what we saw. ANTIA has almost made one circle around Antarctica. If we are
lucky, we might get two more circuits. The more data we collect, the better.
For so long, we thought of ANITA as a mammoth science instrument looming in front
of us. It looked so small floating away into the atmosphere. It’s amazing that that
payload will shed light on the highest energy particles on Earth.
ANITA floats away. (Credit: Christian Miki)
About the Author: Katie Mulrey received a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Mary
Washington in 2008. She is now in the final phase of her Ph.D. work in High Energy Particle
Astrophysics at the University of Delaware. Katie is a part of the ANITA collaboration and is heading to
Antarctica to participate in the 2014 ANITA balloon campaign, which will probe the highest energy
processes in the universe.
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The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Tags: antarctica
antarctica,, atmospheric science
science,, cosmic rays
rays,, Neutrinos on Ice
Ice,, particle physics
physics,, physics
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