This Giant Balloon Can Help Us Study the Stars Like Never Before

Amaze Lab

NASA has started working on the ASTHROS mission, that will use a football stadium-sized balloon to carry a telescope up into the stratosphere over Antarctica.

Transcript

00:00Human's understanding of how stars form will reach new heights with this massive balloon.

00:09NASA has started working on a new mission that will carry a telescope into our stratosphere

00:14with a 400-foot-wide balloon.

00:17Tentatively set to launch in December 2023, the instrument measures light with wavelengths

00:22much longer than what is visible to the human eye or far-infrared light,

00:26allowing it to study the motion and speed of gas around newly formed stars.

00:31To collect data, the balloon will need to hit an altitude of roughly 130,000 feet.

00:36That's about four times higher than commercial airlines fly.

00:39NASA says that's still below the edge of space,

00:41but high enough to see the light without Earth's atmosphere interfering.

00:45The football stadium-sized balloon will ride on air currents above Antarctica

00:49for about three weeks, studying four main targets, including two star-forming regions in our galaxy.

00:55NASA says for the first time, it'll also detect and map two types of nitrogen ions,

01:01which can reveal areas where winds from massive star explosions

01:05have changed gas clouds within these star-forming regions.

Category

Transcript

Recommended