Advertisement
Science

Hermes, Italian stratospheric glider: first success

Advertisement

The Italian Space Agency funded Hermes . In Sweden, the Swedish Space Corporation organized the launch campaign. It is a glider capable of flying independently to collect valuable data useful for astrophysics and the study of the atmosphere . His name is Hermes, a name reminiscent of the Greek deity who carried the messages of the Gods. In fact, the name fits, because the glider has the task of collecting and transporting information from scientific experiments done at very high altitudes in the stratosphere. Everything is possible by storing information in solid state memories.

Its first flight test ended successfully in Sweden at the Esrange space base. The glider was built within the Hemera project . A European project involving 13 organizations, coordinated by Cnes (French space agency). It aims to create a platform on which to create scientific experiments between atmosphere and space. The launch took place aboard a Zero Pressure Balloon, an Italian payload .

The Italian scientific community has thus shown that it is capable of presenting high-profile science projects. The Italian community participated with 24 proposals (the largest number). It had the largest number of experiments selected for more than 50%. Hermes also has an important task for cosmology tests related to large amounts of data, impossible to transfer with current satellite connections. Thus the recovery of scientific data is expected, even in case of experiment loss. Hermes also manages to carry on board test tubes to sample the stratosphere .

 

 

Advertisement
  • First success for Hermes, the Italian stratospheric glider (ansa.it)
  • Hemera project, Hermes Payload launched (asi.it)

 

Advertisement

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button