[Chiba Institute of Technology] Chiba Institute of Technology Planetary Exploration Research Center (PERC)’s stratospheric microbial capture experiment “Biopause Project” balloon experiment was successful!
*Chiba Institute of Technology*
Press release: September 6, 2024
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Chiba Institute of Technology Planetary Exploration Research Center (PERC)’s stratospheric microbial capture experiment “Biopause Project” balloon experiment was successful!
* -overview-*
The Planetary Exploration Research Center (PERC) of Chiba Institute of Technology is collaborating with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and others to carry out the “Biopause Project,” an experiment to collect microorganisms in the stratosphere of the Earth’s atmosphere (approximately 11 km to 50 km altitude). The distribution of microorganisms in the upper atmosphere (stratosphere, mesosphere) is very important for understanding the poorly understood upper end of the Earth’s biosphere (we call it the “biopause”), and is important for understanding the poorly understood upper reaches of the Earth’s biosphere (we call it the “biopause”). This will provide a great clue as to whether or not microorganisms are circulating. This project has conducted four balloon experiments since 2016. However, seawater seepage into the microorganism collection device after landing on water has become a major issue, and we have developed a new type of collection device to solve this problem.
Last month, the PERC team conducted a demonstration experiment of a newly developed stratospheric microbial sampling device. The experiment was conducted using the opportunity to fly an atmospheric balloon provided by the JAXA Institute of Space and Astronautical Science. The balloon equipped with the collection device was released from the Taiki Aerospace Experiment Station (Taiki Town, Hiroo District, Hokkaido) at 4:50 a.m. on August 3rd, and the new
microorganism collection device developed by Chiba Institute of Technology was released as planned. It worked, and the device was subsequently recovered successfully.
The success of this demonstration test was a huge technological step forward toward the project’s goal of observationally determining the upper end of the Earth’s biosphere, the “biopause.” In the future, in order to observe the altitude distribution of microorganisms from the stratosphere to the upper troposphere, we plan to proceed with concrete studies toward the implementation of an atmospheric balloon experiment in which multiple sampling devices such as those
demonstrated this time are mounted in parallel.
Collection device
The situation just before the ball is released
The release of the atmospheric balloon