The United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration aims to set a record when it launches its second super pressure balloon from Wanaka Airport next month.
In a press release yesterday, Nasa's balloon programme office chief Debbie Fairbrother said it was planning to launch on Friday, April 1, or one of the days following, depending on the weather.
Unlike last year's test balloon which had no scientific payload, this year's balloon will carry 1025kg of equipment which Ms Fairbrother said will "investigate long-standing mysteries of the universe, such as those surrounding the births and deaths of stars, positrons, pulsars and black holes''.
As well, Nasa hopes the 532,000cu m balloon will remain at an altitude of 33.5km for up to 100 days, circumnavigating Earth once every one to three weeks, depending on wind speeds in the stratosphere.
The balloon launched from Wanaka on March 26 last year flew 32 days, five hours, and 51 minutes, before being brought down in Australia after developing a leak.
This year's balloon has had a slight modification to overcome the problem that caused last year's flight to be terminated.
"Up to a hundred days at float could shatter the current super pressure balloon flight duration record of 54 days, which occurred over Antarctica in 2009,'' Ms Fairbrother said.
"To achieve this goal flying at mid-latitudes, where the balloon endures pressure changes due to the heating and cooling of the day-night cycle, the super pressure balloon flight must do what no other balloon has accomplished before,'' she said.
"Longer-duration flights enable longer observations of scientific phenomena, the ability to survey more sources, and more time to observe weak or subtle sources.
"In addition, mid-latitude flights are essential for making observations at night, a requirement for certain types of scientific investigations.
"These two aspects greatly enhance the return on science, and combined with the relatively low cost of balloon missions, super pressure balloons could become a competitive platform for a number of scientific investigations that would otherwise need to launch into orbit.''
Ms Fairbrother said one group familiar with the potential of super pressure balloons was the Compton spectrometer and imager (Cosi) team from the University of California, Berkeley.
"Cosi is a Nasa-funded telescope designed to probe the mysterious origins of galactic positrons, study the creation of new elements in the galaxy, and perform pioneering studies of gamma-ray bursts and black holes.
"Long-duration flights are vital to these types of studies.''
Professor of physics at Berkeley and leader of the Cosi collaboration Steven Boggs said super pressure balloons enabled completely new types of science investigations.
"The long duration and night-time observation capabilities of super pressure balloons are transformative.
"Cosi is just the first science payload to take advantage of these new capabilities.''
Cosi last flew on a super pressure balloon launched from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on December 28, 2014.
That balloon developed a small leak, leading to the flight being terminated just one day and 20 hours after launch, but information was gained.
