Photo album: "Before and after the launch"

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We can see in this page a few views from before a launch and of what is going on once the balloon has taken off with its payload. We will arrive, then, at the end of the campaign.

We are inside the building where Gérard Gogly, on the left, and Jean-Jacques Berthelier (partly hidden, on the right) are preparing the measurement gondolas for the next launches.

Roger Raymond, the CNES specialist.

Jean-Jacques Berthelier, is the scientist manager of the experiment CITADEL (Champ dans l'Ionosphère de Terre-Adélie - Field in the Ionosphere of Adelie Land)

Two new measurement gondolas are ready for a twin launch where two balloons will be launched at a two-hour interval. We have been blessed, this day, with a particularly fine weather, with a low-speed wind duration longer than four hours.

Another launch has just been done. During this two-month campaign there will be ten successful launches and two missed ones because of an increased wind velocity at the moment of the launch.

In the ionosphere laboratory (labo IONO) we record the data sent by the balloons.

The transmission antenna permits to send, continuously, a radio signal that the balloon receives and transmits back. Comparing the signal transmitted from the laboratory with the one received back permits to measure the distance of the balloon. The transmitting antenna is also used to send the ballast discharge or the destruction commands.

One of the two rotating antennae that permit to receive the data sent by the measurement gondola (electric field, magnetic field, atmospheric pressure, temperature, orientation of the gondola in relation to the sun and to the base, battery tension, etc.). It is possible to follow two balloons at the same time, each one transmitting on a different frequency chosen before the launch.

In the labo IONO, Bernard Morlet, assistant manager of the Groupe de Recherche Ionosphérique, is responsible of the whole experiment.

I am responsible of the instrumentation on the ground and of the correct recording of the data.

We follow the balloons night and day after a launch, until it reaches the optical range limit. At 30 km flight altitude this limit is 600 km. We send, then, the destruction order which separates the load from the balloon.

According to the wind speed at this altitude, the limit is reached more or less quickly. At the beginning of the campaign a balloon pursuit could last 48 hours. At the end of the campaign, because the wind speed at this altitude had more than doubled, it lasted about 20 hours only.  On the photo, view of the labo IONO during the night, with the main lights switched off.

A first examination of the data permits to check that the experiment is proceeding normally..

The end of the campaign is approaching and, gradually, I am giving back to my face a better likeness to the photo on my passport.

On my left, the responsible of the IONO team for the wintering campaign TA23 that is just beginning.

I am controlling the reception of a ionosphere sounding from a Canadian satellite which has been programmed to transmit during my period of duty to follow a balloon.

The summer campaign has just ended, we embark aboard the Thala Dan on the Wednesday February 27th evening, leaving in Dumont d'Urville base a team of 34 people who will stay alone, cut from the rest of the world, until the return of the ship in December. We start the next day around 5 p.m. We are still in the pack ice on Friday March 2nd under heavy snow storm. We will arrive to Hobart on Thursday March 8th around 7 p.m. From there will begin another journey that will allow me to finish my trip around the world.

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