4 balloons have already been launched
Issued Friday 17 September 2010.4 balloons have been launched from McMurdo in a week.
One flight was not providing data after some time, and was terminated. The other 3 balloons are providing meteorological and chemical information over Antarctica.
The team has been very busy in Mcmurdo over the last week. At any opportunity, when the surface wind was low enough (typically less than 4m/s), they launched a new balloon. 4 have been successfully launched, providing meteorological and chemical information at flight level (17km).
One balloon had to be terminated because the transmission of the data to the ground was lost. The flight was ended at the vicinity of McMurdo, after the balloon had done a loop over the continent. There is some hope to retrieve the instruments and possibly the data in the coming weeks.
In the figure, one can see the location of the 4 balloons just before the first one was terminated.
