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In preparation for NASA’s next Super Pressure Balloon flight from Wanaka, New Zealand, NASA’s balloon team unpacked the top and bottom fittings of the balloon March 17 to perform test and integration work prior to launch.

The 18.8-million-cubic-foot (532,000-cubic-meter) balloon is enormous – about the size of a football stadium – when fully inflated. The balloon’s inflated shape is an oblate spheroid, or less technically, it’s the shape of a pumpkin. The fittings are essentially the north and south poles of the spheroid. The top fitting has valves where inflation tubes are connected to the balloon. The bottom fitting connects to a parachute, and then the parachute connects to the balloon gondola, which houses the payload and supporting instruments.

Given that the balloon is made of 22 acres (8.9 hectares) of polyethylene film and weighs 5,240 pounds (2,377 kilograms), unpacking the balloon is not a trivial activity. Nearly a dozen technicians working different functions carefully opened up the steel-plate-lined shipping box containing the balloon. From there, an overhead crane was used to lift the fittings out while the team worked along either side of the balloon to keep the film safe during the overall operation.

NASA is currently targeting no earlier then March 25 for launch. (NASA/Bill Rodman)

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Tianjin YDL Steel Co is a subsidiary of Tianjin Bohai Rund Steel Group Co., Ltd. It is a large-scale integrated comprehensive enterprise with a variety of businesses in steel exports and domestic sales, milk powder imports, warehouse processing, logistics, real-estate, auto parts manufacture and cultural media. The Group has now established 9 wholly-owned enterprises with annual sales of 5 billion.