Image by NASA
10/03/2019
Boston Globe
By Emily Sweeney
NASA has launched a telescope built by the University of Massachusetts Lowell that could someday find planets and other objects in space that have yet to be discovered, university officials said in a news release.
The telescope, which is about 14 feet long and weighs 1,500 pounds, was lifted on Saturday to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere by a gigantic helium balloon from the NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, N.M.
The balloon measured 39 million cubic feet — about the size of a football field, university officials said.
The telescope rose to heights of about 125,000 feet before returning to Earth, university officials said.