SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — The telephone at the air traffic
control tower at Joe Foss Field was ringing off the wall early
Saturday with callers reporting a bright silver light in the
predawn sky.
There were so many calls that after a while, tower personnel
were answering their telephone with this greeting: “UFO Watch
Center.”
But it wasn’t a UFO. It was a 340-foot-tall high-altitude
balloon on a scientific experiment.
The balloon, launched Friday evening from Ainsworth, Neb., was
part of an experiment by the University of New Mexico and NASA to
gather anti-matter particles and investigate how stars evolved and
how they are changing, according to Bob Golden, an electrical
engineering professor at the Albuquerque, N.M., school
There hasn’t been much research into anti-matter, so not much is
known about the tiny particles, he said in an interview.
The unmanned balloon was 340 feet in diameter when inflated and
550 feet long when stretched out on the ground uninflated,
according to a worker at Raven Industries in Sioux Falls. The
balloon was made in Sioux Falls, the unidentified worker said.
The gondola was 15 feet high, 5 feet wide and had a 4,300-pound
payload, including a computer, according to Golden. A 12-member
NASA crew launched the craft. The ground team included researchers
from the Goddard Space Center in Maryland.
The balloon was expected to land Saturday, but scientists
weren’t sure where it would come to rest.
People in Sheldon and Sioux City, Iowa, reported seeing the
balloon, as did people in parts of Nebraska, authorities said.
Golden said it will take from three months to 12 months to
analyze the data gathered during the balloon flight and that the
results will be published in international scientific journals.
The balloon was so bright in the early morning sky because it
was high enough to reflect sunlight before the sun rose, he said.
The balloon, which also was visible in southwestern Minnesota,
was designed to rise to 120,000 feet, according to a statement from
the National Weather Service’s Sioux Falls office. The balloon
carried sensitive instruments to measure cosmic ray particles, the
NWS said.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 7:57 pm and is filed under NASA, Science, UFO Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.