Abstract :
The Japanese scientific ballooning program has been organized by ISAS since the institute was founded in mid 1960s. Since then, the balloon group of ISAS has been engaged in the development of the balloon technologies and scientific observations in collaboration with scientists and engineers in other universities and organizations. Here, I describe several subjects of recent activities, the details of some items will also be reported in the separate papers in this meeting.
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• Preparation of a new mobile receiving station.
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• Balloons of made of the EVAL (Ethylene-Vinyl-Alcohol) films. EVAL film has specific Infra-red absorption bands, and is expected to be useful for saving the ballast for a long duration flight.
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• A high altitude balloon with thin polyethylene films achieving at an altitude of above 50km. Further improvement of this type of balloons is continued by inventing how to extrude thin films less than 5 microns of thickness.
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• Recent achievement of Antarctica Flights under the collaboration of ISAS and National Polar Institute.
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• Other new efforts to long duration flights such as satellite link boomerang balloon systems and others.
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• New balloon borne scientific instrumentation for observations of high energy electrons and Anti-protons in cosmic-rays.
