Thu, Mar 12, 2015

Commercial balloon spaceflight company World View, has completed their first commercial flight carrying research payloads as part of NASA Space Technology Mission Directorates Flight Opportunities Program.

This program gives students, researchers and educators the opportunity to fly their experiments and payloads with proven commercial flight companies.

World View is committed to furthering stratospheric exploration and research, said Taber MacCallum, World Views Chief Technology Officer. Our first flight as a NASA flight service provider marks the launch of our commercial efforts to aid research and education by providing a new way for NASA and others to access near-space.

Through this flight, World View has demonstrated that they can provide commercial access to near space to advance science and technology of interest to NASA, said Dr. LK Kubendran, Program Executive for NASA Flight Opportunities.

This flight carried two university experiments to the edge of space. In one experiment, eighteen undergraduate students and three faculty members from Gannon University developed and flew equipment designed to measure new aspects in the composition of cosmic rays, a long standing research topic in astronomy. For the second experiment, students from the Florida Space Institute at University of Central Florida tested their Planetary Atmospheres Minor Species Sensor (PAMSS), which is designed to detect the amount and distribution of gases in the atmospheres of Earth and other planets.

Many types of space applications and research need more access to near-space than has been possible previously, said Dr. Alan Stern, World Views Chief Scientist. With this flight, World View illustrates its ability to provide expanded access to the near-space environment for NASA, private corporations and universities.

(File image provided by World View Experience)

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World View Completes First Commercial Flight For NASA