Superpressure balloon

The cycle is magnified by a greenhouse effect inside the balloon, while the surrounding atmospheric gas is subject to a much more limited cyclical temperature change.

[4] In 1985, such balloons were used for aerobots flying at an altitude of approximately 50 kilometres (160,000 ft) in the atmosphere of Venus, in the international, Soviet-led Vega program.

Following the loss of at least two of the ten balloons which provided lift, and after deviating substantially from the course that Colonel Gatch had plotted to take advantage of the jet stream, the last reported sighting of the Light Heart was 1,610 kilometres (1,000 mi) west of the Canary Islands; no further trace of the aircraft was ever found.

[5] In March 2015, NASA launched a SPB to an altitude of 110,000 feet (34,000 m) for 32 days from New Zealand and landed it in Australia after a leak was detected.

[8] After the Travalb-1 launch abort, the Travalb-2 lifted off on 29 December 2019 to test NASA balloon trajectory predictions in Antarctica and to study electron losses from Earth's radiation belts.

Launched from Wānaka, New Zealand, SuperBIT intends to take advantage of day and night cycles made possible by SPB in order to obtain space-quality, diffraction-limited imaging from the stratosphere.