Overview
The global horizontal sounding technique (GHOST) program was an atmospheric field research project in the late 1960s for investigating the technical ability to gather weather data using hundreds of simultaneous long-duration balloons for very long-range global scale numerical weather prediction
Technology
The GHOST program was to demonstrate technology for a program that would, ultimately, gather data from thousands of balloons simultaneously. where the balloon displaces a mass of air equal to its own mass. Expansion of the lifting gas due to solar heating
Results
231 GHOST balloons were launched in a four-year period between March 1966 and December 1969. On September 29, 1968, a GHOST balloon at an altitude of approximately completed a full 365 days in flight, becoming the first balloon to fly for a full year. This record-breaking balloon, launched from Christchurch, New Zealand by the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), continued to fly for an additional 76 days, completing 35 circumnavigations of the Earth. The longest flight of the program was 744 days, or just over two years.
Legacy
For the measurements of the GARP program, the demonstrated flight lifetime at low altitudes (below ) proved to be too short, despite many redesigns of the balloon system to improve the performance. Without both upper level and lower level long-duration balloons, the GHOST system idea was deemed infeasible for the GARP requirements. The GHOST program was superseded by research on the carrier balloon system, also known as "Mother GHOST". Winzen was a pioneer of modern ballooning, and this award recognizes outstanding contributions to the advancement of free-flight balloon systems or related technologies.
External links
*MSN Encarta: Ballooning (Archived 2009-10-31)