STRATOLAB HIGH III - (Lewis - Ross)

The mission was piloted by Commander Malcolm D. Ross and copiloted by Lieutenant Commander Morton Lee Lewis (USN). They departed at 4:41 on July 26, 1958 from the open pit of the Portsmouth Mine, near Crosby, Minnesota.

The balloon carried a record load of 5,500 pounds (2,500 kg). The primary purpose of the flight was to test and evaluate the sealed cabin system, which was designed to carry an externally mounted telescope for observation of the atmosphere of Venus in a subsequent mission of the program. It therefore served as an operational and logistic rehearsal for future flights.

The balloon stabilized at an initial ceiling of 79,500 feet (24,200 m) at 7:40 AM. Ross and Lewis remained in the stratosphere near that altitude throughout the day, although by 22:00 they descended to 68,500 feet (20,900 m) while dropping 350 pounds (160 kg) of batteries. By 22:30 they were able to stabilize at 70,000 feet (21,000 m) after dropping another 98 pounds (44 kg) of ballast. At 9:00 on the following morning, on July 27, the balloon reached its peak altitude of 82,000 feet (25,000 m). The balloonists began their final descent at 10:25.

The balloon touched down near Jamestown, North Dakota. Due to electrical failures in the ballast control system, they were unable to release additional ballast and impacted somewhat harder than they wished, perhaps 300 to 400 feet (90 to 120 m) per minute. The twin cutoff switches then failed to release the balloon and they ascended again to 4,000-5,000 feet (1,200-1,500 m). By 15:21, they were able to solve the problem and descended to bounce again before the cutoff switch finally released the balloon.

During the flight, Ross and Lewis made the first television broadcast from a balloon in the stratosphere. After daybreak on the first day, the balloonists turned on their Dage transitorized television camera in a rack pointed downward through one of the down ports. The television pictures were transmitted to ground and airborne receivers. Later in the morning, Lewis removed the camera from the rack and pointed it at Ross while he was discussing (with a member of the support team flying below in a Navy R5D plane) repairs that they made using masking tape to fix a pressure leak on one of the two escape hatches. At 13:00, they went on the air to broadcast live for 15 minutes over KSTP-TV in Minneapolis, and possibly other stations on the NBC network.

Malcolm Ross described it as "...probably one of the strangest programs that a television audience had ever seen...."

The flight set a new unofficial record for stratospheric flight of 34 hours 20 minutes.

Balloon launched on: 7/26/1958 at 4:41 CDT
Launch site: Portsmouth Mine, Crosby, Minnesota, US  
Balloon launched by: Winzen Research Inc.
Balloon manufacturer/size/composition: Zero Pressure Balloon Winzen
Balloon serial number: 173.6-200-V-
Flight identification number: WRI 793
End of flight (L for landing time, W for last contact, otherwise termination time): 7/27/1958 at 15:21 CDT
Balloon flight duration (F: time at float only, otherwise total flight time in d:days / h:hours or m:minutes - ): 34 h 40 m
Landing site: 45 miles NW of Jamestown, North Dakota, US
Payload weight: 1100 lbs
Overall weight: 5229 lbs

• Cosmic-Ray Monitoring of the Manned Stratolab Balloon Flights Technical report AFCRL TN 60-640 (1960)
• Flight Summary Log Winzen Research Inc. report (1963)
• Observations on nickel-bearing cosmic dust collected in the stratosphere GRD Research Notes Nº 9, March 1959
• Pilot's narrative report of the flight by Malcolm D. Ross, Office of Naval Research
• Stratolab, an Evolutionary Stratospheric Balloon Project - an article by Gregory Kennedy