Ballooning for Biologists: Mission Essentials for Flying Life Science Experiments to Near Space on NASA Large Scientific Balloons

Despite centuries of scientific balloon flights, only a handful of experiments have produced biologically relevant results. Yet unlike orbital spaceflight, it is much faster and cheaper to conduct biology research with balloons, sending specimens to the near space environment of Earth's stratosphere. Samples can be loaded the morning of a launch and sometimes returned to the laboratory within one day after flying. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) flies large unmanned scientific balloons from all over the globe, with missions ranging from hours to weeks in duration. A payload in the middle portion of the stratosphere (~35 km above sea level) will be exposed to an environment similar to the surface of Mars—temperatures generally around −36°C, atmospheric pressure at a thin 1 kPa, relative humidity levels <1%, and harsh illumination of ultraviolet (UV) and cosmic radiation levels (about 100 W/m² and 0.1 mGy/d, respectively)—that can be obtained nowhere else on the surface of the Earth, including environmental chambers and particle accelerator facilities attempting to simulate space radiation effects. Considering the operational advantages of ballooning and the fidelity of space-like stressors in the stratosphere, researchers in aerobiology, astrobiology, and space biology can benefit from balloon flight experiments as an intermediary step on the extraterrestrial continuum (i.e., ground, low Earth orbit, and deep space studies). Our review targets biologists with no background or experience in scientific ballooning. We will provide an overview of large balloon operations, biology topics that can be uniquely addressed in the stratosphere, and a roadmap for developing payloads to fly with NASA.