Development of Instruments for Space Exploration Using Meteorological-balloons

TL;DR

This paper details the design, testing, and deployment of compact scientific instruments on meteorological balloons for space exploration, achieving data collection at high altitudes of 35-42 km.

Contribution

It introduces innovative instrument designs and calibration methods for balloon-borne experiments targeting high-altitude space research.

Findings

Successful testing and calibration of Geiger-Müller counter, scintillator, and phoswich detectors.

Demonstration of instrument performance through flight data at 35-42 km altitude.

Validation of balloon-borne platform for high-energy phenomena detection.

Abstract

Indian Centre for Space Physics is engaged in studying terrestrial and extra-terrestrial high energy phenomena from meteorological balloon borne platforms. A complete payload system with such balloons is at the most about five kilograms of weight. One has to adopt innovative and optimal design for various components of the experiment, so that the data can be procured at decent heights of ~ 35-42 km and at the same time, some scientific goals are achieved. In this paper, we mainly describe the instruments in detail and present their test and calibration results. We discuss, how we implemented and tested three major instruments, namely, a Geiger-M\"uller counter, a single crystal scintillator detector and a phoswich type scintillator detector for our missions. We also present some flight data of a few missions to demonstrate the capability of such experiments.