Word: balloons
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...quiet morning soon after sunup, a big polyethylene balloon took off from near Minneapolis with a weird apparatus dangling far below it. Suspended in a frame was a reflecting telescope of 12-in. aperture built by Perkin-Elmer Corp. of Norwalk, Conn. Its mirrors were made of quartz so that they would not be distorted by solar radiation, and it had an ingenious device to change the focus slightly during each sequence of 20 pictures. This would ensure that one of these pictures would be in good focus. Another device, assembled at the University of Colorado, had the duty...
Automatic Observatory. The astronomer in charge of the balloon-borne observatory, Dr. Martin Schwarzschild of Princeton University, did not go aloft with his telescope. To keep him alive and functioning at extreme altitude would have been too difficult. And besides, as he explained, even the most careful motions of a human operator would destroy the serene stability of the balloon...
...soon as the balloon took off, it was out of human hands. When it reached 80,000 ft., automatic controls would ready the telescope and point it at the sun. They would take about 8,000 pictures (f/200, 1/1000 sec. exposure). Then, their duty done, they would separate the observatory from the balloon and drop it to earth on a giant parachute...
...balloon climbed above 95% of the atmosphere, and left nearly all of its turbulence far below. Even though the automatic observatory was not so elaborate as a ground observatory, it took much better pictures. When they have been carefully studied, they will give scientists new information about the seething turbulence of the sun's surface, which affects the earth in many important ways...
...Nothing but Quiet." As the night wore on, the helium in his balloon cooled and contracted, and Simons began to drop at 500 ft. a minute toward the storms that looked as harmless as tiny powder-puffs. Soon the balloon was down to 68,400 ft., and the temperature inside the gondola dropped to 34° F. Simons pulled on a warming suit over his figure-hugging space suit, dumped some ballast (including two spent batteries), and climbed back to safety. An hour before sunrise, he radioed a plea to the ground: "I've got to get some sleep...