{"id":207916,"date":"2025-12-24T03:22:32","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T03:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/207916\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T03:22:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T03:22:32","slug":"nasa-launches-science-balloon-in-antarctica-photo-of-the-day-for-dec-22-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/207916\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA launches science balloon in Antarctica photo of the day for Dec. 22, 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before a space telescope ever reaches orbit, and long after satellites are up there, NASA <\/a>has another way to do frontier science: high-altitude scientific balloons. These balloons can loft instruments to roughly 120,000 feet (about 36.6 kilometers) \u2014 high in the stratosphere, above most of Earth’s atmosphere<\/a>\u2014at a fraction of the cost and complexity of a space mission, while still enabling serious astrophysics, heliophysics,<\/a> Earth science<\/a>, and technology testing.<\/p>\n

Antarctica<\/a> is one of the best places on Earth to fly these missions. NASA’s annual Antarctic Long-Duration Balloon campaign<\/a> operates from a site on the Ross Ice Shelf <\/a>near the U.S. National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station.<\/p>\n

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In the austral summer, near-constant sunlight and stable polar wind patterns can support extended-duration flights, allowing payloads to gather data for days to weeks as they circle the continent.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

What is it?<\/p>\n

NASA’s first scientific balloon flight of the 2025 Antarctica Balloon Campaign lifted off from the agency’s Antarctic facility<\/a> at 5:30 a.m. NZST Tuesday, Dec. 16 (11:30 a.m. Monday, Dec. 15 U.S. Eastern Time) and reached float altitude carrying an experiment called GAPS<\/a> \u2014 the General AntiParticle Spectrometer.<\/p>\n

Once airborne, NASA reported the balloon was floating at about 120,000 feet (36 kilometers) above Earth’s surface.<\/p>\n

Where is it?<\/p>\n

This image was taken near Antarctica Rubilotta where the balloon launched.<\/p>\n

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\"An
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A massive payload (the GAPS instrument gondola) is suspended from a crane in the foreground while the balloon is set up in the background. (Image credit: NASA\/Andy Hamilton)Why is it amazing?<\/p>\n

GAPS’ goal is to look for rare particles from space called antimatter nuclei,<\/a> specifically antideuterons, antiprotons, and antihelium. Scientists have never clearly seen antideuterons or antihelium in cosmic rays before. If GAPS detects even a single antideuteron, it could give us important clues about the mysterious substance known as dark matter,<\/a> which makes up most of the universe but is invisible to us. GAPS uses a time-of-flight system to measure how fast the particles are moving and a tracker system to record the interaction.<\/p>\n

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!<\/p>\n

Now that the balloon has been launched, the GAPS project is underway, hopefully revealing more about the universe around us in due course.<\/p>\n

Want to learn more?<\/p>\n

You can learn more about antimatter<\/a> and dark matter.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before a space telescope ever reaches orbit, and long after satellites are up there, NASA has another way…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-207916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}