PASADENA, CALIFORNIA — NASA has begun work on an ambitious new project that will carry a cutting-edge telescope high into the stratosphere on a balloon, the space agency said in a press release on July 23.
A gondola beneath the balloon will carry an instrument to measure the motion and speed of gas around newly formed stars, and a lightweight telescope optimized to capture far-infrared light.
The mission is called ASTHROS, which is short for Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths.
It is tentatively planned to launch in December 2023 from Antarctica.
When fully inflated with helium, the balloon will be about 150 meters wide, roughly the size of a football stadium.
In order to observe far-infrared light, which is blocked by Earth's atmosphere, ASTHROS will will need to reach an altitude of about 40 kilometers — roughly four times higher than commercial airliners fly.
Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the mission will observe four main targets: two star-forming regions in the Milky Way; the galaxy Messier 83; and TW Hydrae, a young star surrounded by a wide disk of dust and gas where planets may be forming.