High Altitude Balloon (HAB)

Subject: Science and technology

Section: Msc

Concept :

High Altitude Balloons have been in frequent use for several decades now, though the first uses go back at least 200 years.
They are used mainly for scientific purposes but increasingly for tourism and joy rides, surveillance, and disaster relief and rescue.

Working of HAB’s

Balloons typically have a basket attached to them, called gondolas, that carry instruments or human beings.
In unmanned flights, the gondolas are also attached to a parachute. Once the job of the balloon is done, a device in the gondola is triggered to snap its ties with the balloon as well as create a rupture in the fabric of the balloon.
With the help of the parachute, the gondola then glides down to the earth, followed by the ruptured balloon. The possible landing zone is calculated ahead of the flight based on weather conditions.

Research/Scientific Purposes

Research balloons are balloons that are used for scientific research. They are usually unmanned, filled with a lighter-than-air gas like helium, and fly at high altitudes.
Meteorology, atmospheric research, astronomy, and military research may be conducted from a research balloon.
Weather balloons are a type of research balloon.
Research balloons usually study a single aspect of science, such as air pollution, air temperature, or wind currents, although sometimes several experiments or equipment are flown together.
Other than weather balloons, few research balloons are launched every year. This is driven by the large cost of the balloon, the instrument, which is usually custom made, and the cost of the launch.
Because of the altitude reached by most research balloons, the air is too thin and too cold for humans to survive, therefore most research balloons are unmanned and operated remotely.
NASA has a full-fledged balloon programme that does four-five launches every year. Several universities and research institutions also use balloons for research work.
Balloon-based experiments have resulted in at least two Nobel prizes for Physics, in 1936 and 2006.

Surveillance Purposes

High Altitude Balloon are used for surveillance for various reasons. Some of them are :
Close-range Monitoring: In the age of satellites, surveillance balloons which are typically advanced balloons equipped with high-tech, downward-pointing imaging gear offer close-range monitoring.
Image Quality: The lower-flying balloons, which hover at about the same height as commercial airlines fly, can typically take clearer images than the lowest orbiting satellites.
Satellites that rotate in sync with Earth capture continuous but hazier images due to farther orbit.
Intercepting Communication: Surveillance balloons can also be capable of “gathering electronic signals” and intercepting communications.

Ballooning in India

Scientific balloons have been used in India for more than 70 years, the first one having been sent in 1948 by Homi Bhabha for cosmic ray research.
The Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) started balloon fabrication work in the 1950s, and several balloon flights were launched from Mumbai and Hyderabad.
In 1969, the TIFR opened a full-fledged Balloon Facility in Hyderabad, which remains India’s largest such facility today.
It is regularly used by the space institutions under ISRO, and weather research institutions like the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune.