The GUSTO Team with the payload.
GUSTO Balloon Observatory Mission Ships Out in Preparation for Antarctic Launch
On July 3, the integrated gondola and payload for NASA’s Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO) was shipped from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, on a long route to Antarctica.
GUSTO is an observatory that will fly on a Long-Duration Balloon (LDB) to around 120,000 feet in the air to study the interstellar medium — the matter between the stars — using far infrared detectors. This mission represents a joint effort between NASA, the University of Arizona and Johns Hopkins APL.
The gondola carrying the payload was designed and built at APL by a team of Space Exploration Sector (SES) and Research and Exploratory Development Department (REDD) staff members. Kieran Hegarty, the GUSTO program manager from SES, noted that the seven-year-old mission was long in coming, after the pandemic and technical issues delayed the launch by several years.
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