Author Archives: Zigmund Kermish

The past 48 hours has been a whirlwind, crash-course in the thrilling ride that is scientific ballooning. As I write this, SPIDER has been officially declared ‘at float’ at an altitude of 36 kilometers, our cryogenic system is functioning beautifully, our … Continue reading →

Last week was an eventful one for SPIDER, myself, and for the Long Duration Balloon (LDB) facility here in Antarctica. The first launch of the season happened this Thursday, with a beautiful launch of the first of the three balloon-borne … Continue reading →

It’s been an exciting week here on the Ice. The other two experiments here with us, ANITA and COSI, have declared themselves ‘flight ready’ and gone through compatibility testing with a hang test on the launch vehicle. That means the … Continue reading →

Zigmund Kermish is an associate research scholar at Princeton University. To ship SPIDER to Antarctica, where it will be attached to a balloon and floated over the icy continent to search for signals from the early Universe, the researchers had … Continue reading →

Zigmund Kermish is an associate research scholar at Princeton University. He blogs here. I realized I’ve not yet written a blog post explaining why my experiment is in Antarctica. Things are temporarily quiet on the Ice while we’ve been waiting … Continue reading →