Launching Again (Maybe!)

Robyn and I are going to be attempting, with the help of the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility team, another launch in 8-11 hours from now!  There's a narrow window of good surface weather that would allow us to launch, and so we're going to go for it!

Also, here's an image I took off of my iPod from my favorite app "Planets."  The little red cross is where our payload is.  This is what the earth will look like at 1am local time (roughly solar midnight).  You can see that the payload is right at the edge of where the sunlight hits the earth.  The payload is at 101,000 feet, so the sun won't quite set on the payload, I think.  But this means that our solar panels will be receiving very little sunlight for a short period tonight.  It'll be a good test of our battery and power system tonight!

FYI, as of the posting of this entry, the payload is exactly 885.4 miles due north of McMurdo Station!  It's at 101,000 feet altitude too.

Brett
2010-12-18 at 12:05am (NZDT)