Largest balloon ever launched from Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden
Larger means higher – and today at 4.39 pm local time, the largest stratospheric balloon ever to be launched from Esrange Space Center rose from the ground in northern Sweden. On its way to its destination in North America, it will study X-rays in the polar atmosphere. Behind BOOMS, as the payload is called, stands NASA. The name is short for Balloon Observation of Microburst Scales. It is a high-resolution imager of X-rays from energetic electron microbursts that occur high in the atmosphere closest to the poles. The record-sized balloon that carries the research experiment is 1.7