Chris Hunsley
Northern News Services

Inuvik (June 13/05) - Sometime over the next week or so, a 33-storey tall balloon carrying a space telescope could come to Earth somewhere near Inuvik.

The telescope is to be launched from Kiruna, Sweden, Friday.

The $10 million Balloon Borne Large Aperture Sub-millimetre Telescope (BLAST) will fly 40 kilometres above the Earth and drift over Greenland and across Canada's Arctic, landing in the Mackenzie Delta six to nine days later.

It's an international effort involving more than a dozen universities and private companies from Canada, the U.S., U.K. and Mexico; including the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. The Canadian Space Agency and NASA also got involved to help make BLAST a reality.

"It will be detecting young galaxies and measuring the star formation and history of the universe," said Dr. Peter Martin, head of the astronomy department at the University of Toronto. "And it will help with the understanding of the earliest stages of star formation in the Milky Way."

People who live in the North should be able to see the balloon as it floats through the sky and a recovery team will be in Inuvik ready to collect the telescope.

"We hope it hits you (Inuvik) or right next door," said Martin.

Scientists on the ground will monitor BLAST with GPS, but cannot control its flight. It will drift to earth using a parachute so it can be recovered and used two more times in the future.

Two launch attempts, the latest one last Tuesday, had to be called off due to poor weather. Late June is the cut-off date.