In July 2022, technologists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and Near Space Corporation in Tillamook, Oregon, carried out two successful flights of an aerial robotic balloon, or aerobot, over Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The prototype is a scaled-down version of an aerobot that could one day take to Venus’ skies, exploring an atmospheric region too low for orbiters. During the flights, the aerobot was able to raise and lower its altitude by pumping helium from an inner reservoir into the surrounding outer balloon. As the flexible outer balloon material expanded, the aerobot gained buoyancy and increased in altitude; as helium was pumped back into the reservoir, the balloon’s buoyancy decreased, lowering its altitude.
