Welcome To The Near Space Sciences Collaboration Flight,  NSS-51
This flight first started off as a single idea and mission, To break all existing Amateur Radio Ballooning Records!
But then it morphed into a flight that has the opportunity to be and do something very special.
NSS-51 will be one of three different flights. All three are long duration flight attempts.
Which one of the three happens first is anyone's guess. This all depends on payloads readiness and winds aloft conditions.

     There are three missions in the works. A Short description is here, and links to each detailed flight is at the bottom of this page.

First is :

     This started out as a thought of lets break every maximum altitude record there is, and most likely be the holder of this record forever! And with this balloon, this whole mission started with, unless something drastically went wrong, maximum altitude and flight duration records would be exceeded by far!

     But after doing research on the capabilities of what a 300,000 cubic foot balloon could do, Yes I did say a three hundred thousand cubic foot balloon! I realized that no matter what I placed on this balloon as a payload, that this flight still could break all those records and even be a fun and exciting flight at the same time! Not just a GPS and tracker beacon!

     So I decided to offer this balloon to all the balloon groups and individuals out in the Amateur Radio High Altitude  Ballooning (ARHAB) world to come up with interesting payloads and mission concepts to make this balloon flight as exciting and interesting as possible for everyone. And we sure did!

      I sent out a message on as many of the E-Mail lists as possible, to offer a chance that most likely will never happen again.
A flight on a 130 foot tall 300,000 cubic foot volume balloon! I mean honestly, when will another 300,000 cubic foot balloon become available for an amateur to use solely for their own mission? Three gentlemen came forward offering ideas, and payloads for this project.  Details on the mission and who is involved with Project Apogee, will be found on the Project Apogee Link below.

     Next is a Balloon Project I call:

      This flight is based on the flight theory and design of the manned balloon that was called "EarthWinds" Where an anchor balloon is used to control the altitude the balloon levels off and flies at. This we did try once before, but it was in the days before GPS's were available, and RDF was the only way to track any payload in those days. It did seem to work because it was heard for a few days and last beam headings from both the USA East coast and Europe placed the payload someplace over the North Atlantic.
Click on the EarthBreeze Link At the bottom of this page to take you to that flights mission page.

     And the Third Alternative flight we are working on is called:

      Where Most groups use "HE" (Helium) as their lifting gas, and a few use H2 (Hydrogen) Like we here at Near Space Sciences have done for over 25 years and 50 flights so far. But This flight will use NH3 as the lifting gas. It has a weak amount of lifting power, but it does poses a unique property that has the possibility of making it into a long duration flight. As usual click on the NH3 link below to take you to the flight page for that mission.