The final mission of NASA’s fall balloon campaign successfully concluded, the reflight of the CORSAIR/WASP. The mission launched from the agency’s facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, at 7:30 a.m. MDT (9:30 a.m. EDT) on Oct. 5, 2026, after it aborted on Sept. 19.
The balloon and payload reached a float altitude of around 102,000 feet, and flew for a total of 8 hours, 28 minutes.
CORSAIR is a new science payload to study the Sun’s corona using the Wallops Arc Second Pointer (WASP)a specialized platform that can point scientific instruments at targets during flight at sub-arc-second accuracy. This flight will demonstrate the payload’s capabilities for a potential future Antarctica mission to observe the Sun over one solar rotation, which would take at least 27 days.
Source: www.nasa.gov
