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NASAÕs BARREL Mission Launches 20 Balloons

BARREL team members run under the payload as the balloon first takes flight at the SANAE IV research station in Antarctica. This summer at the South Pole scientists launched 20 balloons up into the air to study an enduring mystery of space weather: when the giant radiation belts surrounding Earth lose material, where do the extra particles actually go? The mission is called BARREL (Balloon Array for Radiation belt Relativistic Electron Losses) and it is led by physicist Robyn Millan of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Millan provided photographs from the team's time in Antarctica in January, 2013. Since they launched balloons in early 2013, the team is back at home building the next set of payloads. They will launch 20 more balloons in 2014. UPI/NASA.

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