Mark Rober, a very popular ex-NASA YouTuber reached out to us to collaborate on an ambitious mission of dropping an egg from the edge of space and performing a soft, precision landing. The mission took many weeks of effort, several balloon flights, and many design tweaks but the end result was pretty spectacular. The YouTube video was released several weeks ago, went #1 on trending, and already has 29 million views! For more information, check out the detailed project page here.
Wrapping up Flight Campaign with NASA Airborne
NCL is wrapping up scientific results gathered from the NASA DC-8 Flying Laboratory campaign in the US Virgin Islands. We modified our balloon-borne science instruments to play nice with the DC-8 aircraft. Our write up on the mission is here.
Happy Hallowe’en!
Discovery Channel and the Bermuda Triangle
Discovery Channel and the show Expedition Unknown reached out to NCL to collaborate on an episode about the Bermuda Triangle. We were interested in the proposal to design an experiment to debunk fantastical theories about the Triangle and its effect on well-known shipwrecks and airplane disappearances.
The episode airs tonight, March 18, at 8PM! Enjoy!
Our behind the scenes commentary can be found on the project page.
Collaborating with Airbus and Project Monark
Introducing our collaboration with Acubed, Airbus' innovation center based in Silicon Valley. For the past few months, we've been working with Acubed on an initiative called Project Monark. The project focuses on advancing weather analytics to improve the operational efficiency and environmental performance of flying commercial platforms.
As part of the effort, we lifted an autonomous "para-sonde" to the edge of of the atmosphere to make operational measurements for climate science applications. Night Crew Labs' effort on this aligns closely with our work on remote sensing payload development for airborne platforms.
Check out the flight video from our June high-altitude balloon launch!
Learn more about Project Monark here.
NASA Selects NCL to Develop Innovative GNSS-RO Space Technology
Night Crew Labs was selected by NASA to further develop its balloon-borne GNSS-RO technology through the NASA Flight Opportunities program, within the Space Technology and Mission Directorate. NCL’s technology was selected under the topic “Fostering the Commercialization of Low Earth Orbit and Utilization of Suborbital Space”.
Through this grant award, NCL will fly their GNSS-RO payload on a World View Enterprises long-duration balloon mission, scheduled for 2020. Data collected from this flight will provide insights in the payload’s atmospheric sensing performance, advance its technology readiness level, and further ready the instrument for operational weather forecasting use in the future.
More information can be found in the NASA press release.
Commercial vehicles contracted by the NASA Flight Opportunity program.
NCL Awarded NOAA Phase II Contract
Night Crew Labs was selected by NOAA to continue a research and development contract through its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. This two-year, Phase II SBIR contract award focuses on developing the GNSS radio occultation technique on high-altitude balloon platforms. The overarching objective of this contract is to improve regional weather predictions in high-impact areas at critical times. This will be achieved by applying state-of-the-art atmospheric sensing technologies to existing aerial platforms.
NOAA’s SBIR program is a great example of how public-private partnerships can accelerate critical technology to enable improved weather prediction capabilities and commercialization efforts surrounding it.
High-Altitude Balloon Flight over Northern California
Following some early successes with ground and flight tests, Night Crew Labs launched a high-altitude balloon carrying two remote sensing weather payloads skyward. We flew this mission on the morning of January 6, 2019 by San Luis Reservoir, California. It was a very calm, windless day, ideal for a high-altitude balloon flight. The balloon reached a peak altitude of 90,928 ft (27.7 km), capturing some beautiful views of our Blue Marble before bursting. This was the first flight we sent a GoPro Hero 7 to the edge of space – we were very impressed with the stabilized video that was captured.
The objective of the flight was to gather raw GNSS measurements at 60,000+ feet from setting GNSS satellites. This effort helped us determine the feasibility of this technology on a high-altitude balloon platform and meet the goals set forth in our contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The results from this flight were very promising and we’re ready to continue our research and development effort with GNSS radio occultation on high-altitude balloon platforms.
Enjoy a video of the mission below.
This is What Technology Development Looks Like
Follow us on our journey to developing our weather forecasting technology for the prime time.
Our end goal of this NOAA GNSS-RO balloon project is to deploy our systems to collect real-time data and have operational impacts to global weather forecasting.
To accomplish that goal, many steps need to be taken to ensure our technology is ready. The technology development pipeline goes something like this: idea creation, lab testing, flight testing, data validation, and engineering development. Here’s a video of an early flight test we performed in late 2018. Enjoy!
Hello World!
Welcome to the re-designed Night Crew Labs site. Feel free to explore - check out some new content, and the upgraded servers will make your browsing experience more enjoyable. Thanks for visiting!