On this day...

Remembering important events and dates of scientific ballooning history

August

  • August 2 1799

    Jacques Étienne Montgolfier dies

    On this day, in 1799 the French ballooning pioneer, Jacques Étienne Montgolfier who with his brother Joseph-Michel, developed the hot-air balloon and conducted the first untethered flights died at the age of 54 on the way from Lyon to Annonay. Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier were born into a family of paper manufacturers. In 1782 started to build and test parachutes and less than a year after performed an initial experiment with a balloon of taffeta filled with hot smoke in a public demonstration on 5 Jun 1783.

    This was followed by a flight carrying three animals as passengers on 19 Sep 1783, shown in Paris and witnessed by King Louis XVI. On 21 Nov 1783, their balloon carried the first two men on an untethered flight which become the first manned balloon flight. Modifications of the basic Montgolfier design were incorporated in the construction of larger balloons that, in later years, led to exploration of the upper atmosphere. Étienne also developed a process for manufacturing vellum.

    In 1983, the Montgolfier brothers were inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

  • August 3 1974

    Record setting balloon launched at Churchill

    On this day in 1974, a 50.31 million cubic feet stratospheric balloon was launched from Fort Churchill, Manitoba as part of the Churchill Skyhook 1974 launch campaign carried out under the sponsorship of the Office of Naval Research. The 512-foot diameter balloon was manufactured by Winzen Research Inc. using 0.5 mil StratoFilm with two 0.7 mil caps and 200-pound load tapes, had a gore length of 703 feet and a weight of 2,956 pounds.

    The mission goal was to perform an experiment on comic rays for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The balloon spent 16 hours at an altitude of 155.000 feet before landing in the Athabasca recovery area in Alberta, Canada.

  • August 9 1969

    Cecil Frank Powell dies

    On this day in 1969, the English physicist Cecil Frank Powell, died at the age of 66 years whilst out walking in the foothills of the Alps, near Valsassina, Italy. Powell was born on December 5, 1903 at Tornbridge, Kent.

    He earned his Ph.D. in Physics in 1927. In 1928 he took up a post as Research Assistant to A.M. Tyndall in the H.H. Wills Physical Laboratory at the University of Bristol, later being appointed lecturer, and in 1948 appointed Melville Wills Professor of Physics. During his time there, Powell applied himself to the development of techniques for measuring the mobility of positive ions, to establishing the nature of the ions in common gases, and to the construction and use of a Cockcroft generator to study the scattering of atomic nuclei. He also began to develop methods employing specialised photographic emulsions to facilitate the recording of the tracks of elementary particles, and in 1938 began applying this technique to the study of cosmic radiation, exposing photographic plates at high-altitude, at the tops of mountains and using stratospheric balloons. Powell's group at Bristol, performed many balloon launches from the grounds of the University, as well in Cardington, Bedfordshire. Also during that same decade Powell directed several balloon launch expeditions to Sardinia and the Po Valley, in Italy which involved many universities across Europe.

    In 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method".

  • August 10 1840

    First balloon flight above Canada

    On this day in 1840 American aeronaut Louis Anselm Lauriat of Boston, Massachusetts, ascended from Barrack Square, Saint John, New Brunswick in his hydrogen balloon "Star of the East". He landed safely at a point near the Ouaco Road, 21 miles from the city.

    Althought at that time, New Brunswick was a British colony (in 1867, it became one of the four original provinces of the Dominion of Canada) this is considered the first piloted balloon flight performed over a territory that would be Canada.

  • August 16 1960

    Record setting jump by Kittinger on Program Excelsior

    On this day in 1960, Captain Joseph Kittinger of the United States Air Force (USAF) set a new record for the highest parachute jump and subsequent freefall.

    As part of the Project Excelsior program, the USAF carried out a series of extreme parachute jumps to test the efficiency of a system for extremely high-altitude ejections. This culminated in the Excelsior III test on which Kittinger jumped from a helium balloon at a height of 102,800 feet, or 19.46 miles.

    Experiencing -70º temperatures and freefall speeds of over 600 mph, Kittinger safely landed 13 minutes and 45 seconds after having jumped. His record stood for 52 years until it was eventually broken in 2012 by Felix Baumgartner.

  • August 16 1971

    EOLE satellite launched

    On this day in 1971 France's Eole (CAS-I) Cooperative Applications Satellite was launched by NASA from Wallops Station using a four-stage Scout vector. The objective of the satellite was to obtain meteorological data from balloons and to analyze meteorological data acquired from constant-density surface balloons for study of characteristics and movements of air masses. Secondary NASA objective was to acquire technology of satellite range and range-rate system for locating free-moving balloons.

    About 500 balloons were launched by CNES during 1972 from three stations in Argentina that collected wind, temperatures, and pressures flying at an altitude of 12 kilometers in the Southern Hemisphere. Balloons, were interrogated by Eole day and night, individually, in sequence, or in programmed group of up to 64 at a time.

  • August 17 1978

    Double Eagle II crosses succesfuly the Atlantic

    On this day in 1978 aeronauts Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman landed the Double Eagle II gas balloon in France to complete the first successful transatlantic crossing by a manned balloon. The 137-hour and 6-minute flight took off from Presque Isle, Maine and landed in a field of barley in Miserey, 60 mi (97 km) northwest of Paris. This was the first successful transatlantic crossing by a manned balloon.

    Newman originally intended to hang glide from the balloon to a landing, while Anderson and Abruzzo continued to fly, but the hang-glider had to be dropped as ballast earlier on 16 August.

    A full chronicle of the voyage can be found in the December 1978 issue of National Geographic.

  • August 18 1823

    André-Jacques Garnerin dies

    On this day in 1823, André-Jacques Garnerin a French balloonist and the inventor of the frameless parachute, died at an age of 54 while he was working on the construction of a new balloon: a falling beam at the construction site killed him instantly.

    Garnerin was born in Paris on January 31, 1769. As an adult, during the first phase of the French Revolutionary Wars, he was captured by British troops. Subsequently, he was turned over to the Austrians and held as a prisoner of war in Hungary for three years. He was a student of the ballooning pioneer Professor Jacques Charles and was heavily involved in the flight of hot air balloons, and worked with his older brother, Jean-Baptiste-Olivier Garnerin (1766-1849), in most of his ballooning activities. He began experiments with early parachutes based on umbrella-shaped devices and carried out the first frameless parachute descent (in the gondola) with a silk parachute on 22 October 1797 at Parc Monceau, Paris. That configuration (an open parachute connecting the balloon and the gondola) is still used worldwide in manned and unmanned scientific ballooning.

    His significant contributions to ballooning and his expertise led to his appointment as the Official Aeronaut of France.

  • August 18 1932

    Piccard and Cosyns set record altitude

    On this day in 1932, Professor Auguste A. Piccard and his assistant, Max Cosyns, performed a high altitude balloon mission that set a new official record after reaching 16,201 meters (53,153 feet) in a sealed gondola. The flight, (the second funded by Belgium's Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, hence the name of the mission FNRS) was launched at 5:22 AM from the Dübendorf Airfield, in Zürich, Switzerland. They used a a hydrogen-filled balloon made of rubberized cotton fabric with a volume of 500,000 cubic feet. The gondola was made of aluminum and was 7 feet (2.14 meters) in diameter. There were two hatches for entry and exit, and seven port holes. Objective of the flight was to investigate the upper levels of Earth's atmosphere and to study cosmic radiation.

    After a 12-hour voyage over the Toggenburg mountains, the Grisons Alps and nothern Italy, the FNRS balloon finally landed south of Lake Garda near the village of Monzambo in the Desenzano region. The data collected by Professor Piccard in this and the previous flight (1931) of the FNRS were later of vital importance in the development of pressurized aircraft cabins. For this achievement, Professor Piccard was made Commandeur de l'Ordre de Léopold and Max Cosyns, Chevalier de l'Ordre de Léopold by Albert I, King of the Belgians.

    Nowadays, the FNRS-1 gondola is currently in display at the Swiss Transport Museum in Lucerne.

  • August 18 1934

    Balloon flight by Cosyns and van Elst from Belgium to Slovenia

    On this day in 1934, a balloon with two Belgian aeronauts, professor Max Cosyns and his assistant Nere van Elst took off from Hour-Havenne airport in Belgium and reached an altitude of 16 kilometers several hours later. During the flight they reported live to various radio stations and media outlets across Europe and the USA using a transmitter in the balloon's gondola. On their descent strong winds carried them across Austria until after a 14-hour flight they finally landed in the Slovenian village of Zelivlje.

    The small town -which was virtually off the map until then- was overnight in the eye of the international press. As a result, in 1997 a memorial with a bronze statue, the work of Mirko Bratusa, has been placed in the spot of the balloon's landing remembering the feat.

  • August 19 1957

    Second flight of MANHIGH project

    On this day in 1957 was performed the second flight of project MANHIGH, a United States Air Force balloon flight program designed to investigate the human factors of space flight by taking men into the stratosphere. The mission was piloted by Major David G. Simons, who at the time was part of the Aeromedical Field Laboratory, and also was the Air Force Project Officer for the program.

    The mission was launched at 9:22 CDT from the bottom of the open pit of the Portsmouth iron mine near Crosby, Minnesota. The balloon and the entire operation of the flight was performed by Winzen Research Inc. Two hours and 18 minutes after launch, the balloon reached its planned 101,500 foot ceiling setting a new record for manned balloon flight. Simons started to perform numerous observations, took photographs, and recorded data during the entire flight. The mission was expected to drift westward to Montana, but as winds were slower than anticipated the balloon never got beyond the eastern part of the Dakotas. Also the flight was supposed to endure 24 hours but finally dragged on almost a half day longer, as Major Simons in his balloon capsule and tracking parties on the ground looked for a suitable opening in the clouds through which to descend.

    Finally, after 33 hours aloft, the capsule landed in an alfalfa field near Frederick, South Dakota.

  • August 27 1783

    First flight of an hydrogen balloon over Paris

    On this day in 1783, French inventor Jacques-Alexandre-César Charles along with engineers Anne-Jean Robert and Nicolas-Louis Robert performed and unmanned balloon flight from Paris using Hydrogen as lifting gas. At a time on which the new invented vehicles used hot-air Charles who was studying behaviour of gases, chose a different path and though that also hydrogen may be used to lift a balloon.

    The balloon was launched from the Champ de Mars (actual location of the Eiffel Tower) and flew for approximately 45 minutes. It finally landed near the village of Gonesse, 21 kilometres northeast from Paris. There, the peasants, thinking it a monster, attacked it and dragged it across the countryside. Soon afterwards, the government issued a proclamation explaining that a balloon: "so far from being a terrifying phenomenon, it is only a machine ... which is quite harmless and which, it is to be presumed, will some day prove of benefit to science."

  • August 29 1982

    Project Hang Glide sets a new record for highest glide from 33.000 ft

    On this day in 1982, John Bird established a new world record of hang gliding after performing a glide from 33.000 ft. The pilot reached that altitude attached to an helium balloon, beating the previous mark of 32.700 ft set in 1978.

    The balloon with the hang glide attached was launched at 7 AM local time from the Hawrelak Park in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and after reaching the preset altitude, the pilot disconnected from it and started the glide. The return to the ground took near 40 minutes for a landing in a farmer's field near Tofield. Although the balloon could have risen even higher, the pilot decided to begin the descent as soon as the record was surpassed because he was at the limit of his oxygen reserve.

    The feat, sponsored by The Edmonton Journal a local newspaper, marked the end of three frustrating years of technical malfunctions and troublesome weather for Bird and his team. Bird's record would remain untouched until it was surpassed in 1994 by Judy Leden in Jordan.