A particular exemption allowed a NASA-funded climate balloon to launch as deliberate Oct. 1, regardless of the continuing authorities shutdown that started that day. However information in regards to the balloon, and an exoplanet-hunting experiment on board, obtained somewhat confused after landing.
When the balloon landed Oct. 2 in farmland in Hale County, Texas after a flight excessive in Earth’s ambiance, a number of native information reviews steered the balloon had crashed (or landed unexpectedly) — however that is not what occurred, mentioned experiment principal investigator Christopher Mendillo. “I am certain they only had no info to go on and made some assumptions,” Mendillo, a College of Massachusetts Lowell exoplanet researcher, informed Area.com. His group has been engaged on iterations of the planet-seeking experiment since 2005, launching on each sounding rockets and balloons.
An uncommon flight
NASA personnel labored exhausting earlier this fall to get Mendillo’s experiment launched regardless of the looming shutdown, which furloughed 15,000 company personnel after lawmakers in Washington, D.C. did not move a authorities funding invoice earlier than fiscal 12 months 2025-26 started on Oct. 1.
The company obtained an exemption to proceed with the balloon launch, he mentioned. (NASA officers affiliated with the flight weren’t obtainable for remark after Area.com reached out, as a result of shutdown, in response to automated out-of-office responses.)
The necessity to launch Oct. 1, and on no different date, was due to a phenomenon often called “atmospheric turnaround”, which permits the balloon to launch within the morning and to remain up by way of the night time. Turnaround — a change in wind velocity — occurs twice a 12 months within the mid-latitudes of the stratosphere, part of Earth’s ambiance, within the early spring and the late summer season.
“Most years, turnaround lasts one to 2 weeks; this 12 months it was at some point, Oct. 1,” Mendillo mentioned. “There was solely at some point in 2025 the place we might launch our mission and meet our science and know-how objectives — and that was the day the federal government occurred to close down.”
NASA launched Mendillo’s exoplanet experiment aboard a analysis balloon supplied by the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas (which is roughly two hours southeast of Dallas). The power is managed by a balloon program workplace positioned at Virginia’s Wallops Flight Facility, operated by NASA’s Goddard Area Heart in Maryland.
The facility’s web site says it launches uncrewed and enormous (400-foot diameter) high-altitude balloons rated to fly to about 120,000 toes (almost 37 km, or roughly the peak of skydiver Felix Baumgartner’s high-altitude bounce in 2012). Columbia additionally tracks the balloons, and recovers the experiments on board.
Mendillo’s flight, known as 758N, lifted off as deliberate Oct. 1 from Fort Sumner, New Mexico (east of Alburqueque) as a part of the fall 2025 flight marketing campaign. Observations of the exoplanets wrapped up at about 1 a.m. native on Oct. 2, Mendillo defined, however the flight group waited till 6 a.m. to terminate the flight to permit for a protected touchdown zone. (You may see the flight path right here, courtesy of NASA, and an alternate map of the trail on the ballooning website StratoCat.)
NASA recovered the payload on Oct. 2 and officers drove it again to the launch facility that very same day, Mendillo mentioned. The experiment is now sitting at Wallops, awaiting the tip of the shutdown in order that it may be shipped again to Mendillo’s college. However some outcomes are already obtainable.
A NASA analysis probe crash-landed in a Texas farm final week after being blown off target.The probe got here down on the farm of Ann and Hayden Walter in Edmonson, prompting the household to name the native sheriff’s division. pic.twitter.com/ENjwq5tKx5October 10, 2025
Exoplanet hunter
Mendillo’s experiment is known as Planetary Imaging Coronagraph Testbed Utilizing a Recoverable Experiment for Particles Disks (PICTURE-D). The mission is funded by a $7-million, five-year grant from NASA’s Astrophysics Analysis and Evaluation Program, in response to UMass Lowell.
Because the experiment’s identify implies, PLANET-D goals to advance applied sciences for exoplanet imaging—that means taking direct footage of exoplanets, as they orbit their dad or mum stars. That is no straightforward feat for a telescope, because the stars are fairly vivid and the exoplanets are solely faintly seen in dim mirrored mild, by comparability.
“We’ve been engaged on this particular experiment since 2022, and variations of it since 2005,” mentioned Mendillo, paying tribute to a big group of school, post-doctoral researchers, and college students ranging in age from highschool to graduate researchers. A number of iterations have flown earlier than: two NASA sounding rockets in 2011 and 2013 launched PICTURE and PICTURE-B, respectively, and the PICTURE-C experiment additionally flew twice on a high-altitude balloon in 2022.
“Our mission is designed to immediately picture distant photo voltaic programs searching for mud rings, asteroid belts and exoplanets,” Mendillo mentioned of PICTURE-D, which carries a 23-inch (60-centimeter) telescope. “We noticed 4 completely different stars, together with one binary [two-star] system, and picked up hundreds of photographs. We’re simply beginning to catalog and course of these information, and hope to current our findings within the subsequent six months.”
The primary science end result from PICTURE-D was a picture of the Gamma Cassiopeiae binary star system positioned, because the identify suggests, within the constellation Cassiopeia. “We took this picture throughout the day, when sky backgrounds have been too excessive for exoplanetary imaging,” Mendillo mentioned.
The first star, known as A, was blocked within the telescope’s view by an instrument often called a coronagraph—a tool that obscures the brilliant mild of an object to let fainter objects close by shine by way of. Consequently, the secondary “B” star is seen within the picture regardless of being 3,000 instances dimmer than its companion.
“This picture illustrates the issue of imaging exoplanets in mirrored seen mild. If that secondary star have been truly a planet, it will be a million instances dimmer,” Mendillo mentioned.
The researchers obtained the info they wanted, though there have been some minor points throughout the flight that degraded the efficiency — one thing Mendillo says the group hopes to deal with the following time they fly PICTURE-D, in 2026 or 2027.
Finally, the applied sciences they fly could also be used on a future flagship NASA mission, such because the proposed Liveable Worlds Observatory aiming to stare upon Earth-sized worlds within the 2040s.
