The French balloon programme - An overview of programmes supported by CNES, the French Space Agency

The present paper focuses on examples-of recent and future French, European and international scientific balloon programmes carried out under the responsibility of CNES, the French Space Agency, who also provides funds for national participating institutes. In astronomy the second successful flight of the Pronaos submillimeter observatory took place from Fort Sumner, NM (USA), in 1997. In plasmas physics, the Interboa 1996 and 1999 campaigns are descibed. The ILAS validation Japanese/French international campaign of 1997 is an example of experiment devoted to satellite data validation. It included the first long duration flights within the winter Arctic vortex. Presently under preparation is the 1999 European Theseo campaign for the study of stratospheric ozone destruction processes. During this same campaign, the Lagrangian Experiment for the study of the dynamics and chemistry of the polar stratospheric vortex provides for the launch of 5 long duration balloons. Small tropospheric superpressure balloons will be launched in 1999 from Southern India during the Indoex experiment which is a major international endeavour to study the impact on the global environment of anthropogenic emissions coming from the Indian continent. Finally, the present status of the major international Antarctic campaign Strateole using 10 m diameter superpressure balloons will be presented. (C) 2000 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.