spaceballoon

If the weather holds, balloons and not planes will be taking off at the Victor M. Power Airport.

The 2015 Stratospheric Balloon campaign is launching their first of six experiments Friday.  Victor M. Power Airport Manager, Dave Dayment says Friday is their first window to do the launch.

“They do a 24 hour countdown and the meteorologist does a countdown. Some of the experiments aren’t dependent on the time of day but some are dictated for night time or daylight.  If they have a window they take it whether it’s at 11pm or 2am.”

The campaign runs until Sept. 30th with six scheduled launches. The name of the first experiment is CLIMAT, then in the order, GOLD, H2O, BIT, CARMEN and finally PILOT. A total of 6 balloons will be launched varying from 100 000 m^3 to 800 000 m^3 in volume

New this year is a 360-degree camera mounted to the balloon to capture aerial views of the Earth during the balloons 38km climb into the Stratosphere.