A research balloon the size of a football field recently flew over Nunavut and the NWT studying the galaxy and causing a stir in some of the communities it traveled to. XL-Calibur — launched from Kiruna, Sweden, last week — was built by a team of 50 scientists from the US, Japan and Sweden to measure X-rays from black holes and neutron stars. The trip lasted six days, seven hours and 45 minutes and was a collaboration between NASA, Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. The balloon, which is the size of a football field, was photographed at 130,000 feet by Richard Bose, a senior research engineer at the University of Washington who helped build the telescope it was carrying. (Submitted by Richard Bose) A Twitter account for XL-Calibur shared photos taken by people in Norway, Iceland, and Arviat and Iqaluit, Nunavut. The balloon also flew over Yellowknife before Richard Bose, a senior research engineer at WUSTL, said the payload landed 80 kilometers away from Délı̨nę, NWT, on Monday. XL-Calibur sighted by Arviat on west side of Hudson Bay!📷: Borma Jean Kablutsiak pic.twitter.com/Z0qd93BjG4 —@SuperTigerLDB Bose said NASA decided when to end the flight, a process that involved punching a hole in the balloon so it dropped from an altitude of 130,000 feet to about 50,000 feet. The balloon and telescope were then separated – the latter being brought to the ground by parachute. “I just missed a few trees and I certainly didn’t land in a lake, which is our biggest concern,” said Bose, who helped build part of the telescope and said water likely wouldn’t be kind to its rare and expensive mirrors. . contains. The XL-Calibur was spotted drifting over Iqaluit last Friday. (Karen Pikuyak/CBC) NASA communications officer Jeremy Eggers told CBC News in an email that the polyethylene film balloon landed nearly 20 kilometers from the payload and that a team was deployed to retrieve all three parts. Before ending any flight, Eggers said NASA’s balloon science team does an investigation to keep the public safe, minimize environmental impact and make sure they can recover as much of the equipment as possible. “NASA considers environmental impacts when conducting all of its science balloon missions and is taking action to mitigate impacts,” he wrote, adding that the agency worked with Canadian officials to coordinate the flight and landing site of the XL- Calibur. Bose said XL-Calibur’s primary focus is a black hole called Cygnus X1, which is special because it’s absorbing gas from a nearby star. The line on this map shows XL-Calibur’s flight path from Sweden, over Norway and Iceland, and northern Canada. (Columbia Balloon Science Facility) “Black holes are very mysterious objects out there, and of course you can’t tell what’s going on in them because light can’t escape,” he said. But scientists can study things happening nearby, he said, such as something “very intense” producing X-rays near Cygnus X1. “In the spirit of exploring and understanding what’s going on in our universe, it’s a piece of fundamental research that we’re lucky to be able to fund.”
