The NASA super pressure balloon carrying the SuperBIT scientific payload has crossed the Pacific Ocean after just five days of flight and will reach South America today (Friday, April 21).

The balloon, which lifted off from Wānaka Airport on April 16 will quickly transit Chile and Argentina as it continues its globetrotting journey about the southern hemisphere’s mid-latitudes.

“The balloon is healthy and performing brilliantly, maintaining a steady altitude at around 108,000 feet, which has been the primary goal of this mission,” NASA’s scientific balloon programme chief Debbie Fairbrother said.

“This is the first of many flight milestones to come - we aim to cross the Pacific several more times as we verify and validate this balloon technology while supporting some real cutting-edge science.”

The SuperBIT science team has already returned stunning images from the balloon-borne telescope, capturing images of the Tarantula Nebula and Antennae Galaxies.

The Tarantula Nebula. PHOTO: NASA/SuperBIT

The Tarantula Nebula is a large star-forming region of ionised hydrogen gas that lies 161,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and its turbulent clouds of gas and dust appear to swirl between the region’s bright, newly formed stars. 

The Antennae Galaxies are two large galaxies colliding 60 million light-years away toward the southerly constellation Corvus. 

The Antennae Galaxies. PHOTO: NASA/SuperBIT

The goal of the mission is to map dark matter around galaxy clusters by measuring the way these massive objects warp the space around them, also called “weak gravitational lensing.”

The SuperBIT team is a collaboration among NASA; Durham University, United Kingdom; the University of Toronto, Canada; and Princeton University in New Jersey.

Find out more information on NASA’s Balloon Program here.