TIFR Zero-Pressure Balloon Programme Crosses a Milestone

High-altitude scientific balloons offer unique opportunities to carry scientific payloads to stratospheric altitudes at a cost several orders of magnitude lower than the corresponding satellite missions. Balloon-borne payloads are easy to implement allowing quick experiment turn-around times and inexpensive reflights can be conducted as the payload is recovered most of the times. In addition, in situ and high-resolution spatial and temporal measurements of the earth’s atmosphere can be made that might not be feasible with satellites. They are also used as a testbed to prove technologies for future satellite missions. Scientific ballooning was initiated at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai in 1945, when scientific instruments were flown to stratospheric altitudes using a cluster of weather balloons for cosmic-ray research. The need to have balloons float at constant stratospheric altitudes for studies in astronomy led to the initiation of work on the design and fabrication of zero-pressure polyethylene (ZP) balloons at TIFR in 1956. Since then, several ZP balloon flights have been conducted for studies in astronomy, atmospheric science, astrobiology, balloon technology and space technology development, leading to several important scientific results. In 2018, the TIFR balloon programme crossed an important milestone of conducting more than 500 ZP balloon flights. This article presents recent advancements made in some areas of scientific ballooning and details of balloon experiments conducted in the past two decades.