Abstract :
CNES, the French Space Agency, makes available to the French and European scientific communities a comprehensive ballooning capacity with vehicles adapted to different scientific objectives as required by the scientists, and world-wide operational services. In addition, it provides funds to French scientific groups to develop balloon-borne instruments and fly them either individually or in the frame of coordinated campaigns. The main fields of research presently covered by the French scientific balloon programmes are astronomy, stratospheric dynamics and chemistry for science and satellite data validation, and troposphere dynamics. This paper shall briefly present these capabilities as well as the programmes and campaigns carried out during the past two years. It will give more detailed information on some experiments using different types of balloons such as the THESEO 1999 and 2000 campaigns for the study ozone destruction processes, the CLAIRE and ARCHEOPS astronomy experiments, the MUTSI, INDOEX and MAP balloon campaigns using small pressurised balloons for atmospheric dynamic studies. The results of the third flight of the 2-meter PRONAOS IR and sub-mm astronomy observatory will be presented in a separate paper. Finally, this paper will also put emphasis on an original technical development named AEROCLIPPER, devoted to atmosphere/ocean experiments, as well as on future scientific and technological trends as defined by the French scientific community.
