NASA To Launch Scientific Balloons With Two Charges On The Intergalactics

Long-term scientific balloon launch area (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA NASA will again hold the Scientific Balloon program in Space. This program will include two launches from the ice surface, precisely from NASA facilities near McMurdo Station.

The plan, this program will be launched in early December, but NASA has yet to reveal a date. The program this time was designed to support two scientific missions, namely the Charge for Ultra High Energy Observation (PUEO) and General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS).

The first mission, PUEO, is the first balloon mission of NASA's Astrophysics Pioneers program. The program supports lower-cost astrophysical research. The PUEO payload is specifically designed to detect signals from neutrinos, high-energy particles traversing the universe.

The neutrino will bring important information about events that occur at a distance of billions of light years. During the mission, the payload will search for the radio signals produced when neutrinos from space hit Antarctic ice.

"The PUEO mission is basically like using Space ice as a big telescope," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of NASA's Astrophysical Division, quoted on Tuesday, December 9. Shawn believes that this mission can help scientists understand how the universe works.

The second supported mission is GAPS, an experiment designed to help uncover the origins of dark matter. This material cannot be seen with the naked eye, but satisfies 80 percent of the total matter in the universe.

GAPS is developed to detect certain antimatter particles produced only when dark matter decays. Both of these charges will take advantage of zero-pressure balloons that are claimed to be suitable for long-term scientific missions.