Stratosphere Balloon launches are continuing at the Timmins Airport.
The Canadian and French Space Agencies have teamed up to send giant balloons into the Timmins sky and monitor different levels for multiple experiments. The agencies picked Timmins as the launch site because the city is located in a great middle ground. President of the Canadian Agency Sylvain Laporte says when you do too far south, it starts getting more populated, which is an issue when you try to land the stratospheric balloons. Laporte says when you go further north, the weather can cause some issues with the balloons.
Laporte says there are a variety of experiments launching from the Timmins site into the stratosphere. “We’ve got climate change type missions, environmental monitoring type missions, we’ve got camera type missions and astronomy type missions.” He says these experiments are all being conducted by people doing research at Universities and in the industry. He says the hope is to send some of the projects into space. “But they are testing it at lower altitudes here,” Laporte adds. “It’s a lot less expensive than figuring out you have a problem in space.”
Laporte says the work that comes from this balloon base is amazing.