Organization

Project management and stratospheric superpressure balloon (SPB) system

CNES is in charge for France of balloons and support facilities and resources, suspended payloads, the Flight Control Centre, balloon launch and tracking operations, logistics and more broadly the management of the Strateole 2 programme and international relations.

Scientific instruments, development and components

Research laboratories and centres are contributing to the project:

• in France, at the national scientific research centre CNRS: the LMD dynamic meteorology laboratory, the LATMOS atmospheres, environments and space observations laboratory, the engineering division at the INSU national institute for universe sciences, the LPC2E environmental and space physics and chemistry laboratory, the GSMA molecular and atmospheric spectrometry laboratory and Meteo-France,

• Iin the United States, under the aegis of the National Science Foundation (NSF): the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP, Boulder, Co.) in association with the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (San Diego, Ca.),

• in Australia, at the University of Adelaide, in Italy with the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (CNR-ISAC) and in India with the National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL).

Flight model production

The planned organization for production of flight models is similar to that for development.

Execution

Balloon preparation, launch and flight management will be the responsibility of CNES. LMD and partners will prepare payloads at the launch site, conduct flight management operations for Zephyr gondolas and flight operations on instruments.

Project funding is coming chiefly from CNES, CNRS and NSF in the United States. The Strateole 2 project is also being supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) for its contribution to calibration/validation (CalVal) of the Aeolus satellite, by the ANR national research agency that is funding the BOOST3R-Strateole-2 project, and by Paris Saclay University.