Wellington:- A stadium-sized pressure balloon launched by Nasa in New Zealand began collecting data in near space on Wednesday, beginning a 100-day planned journey after several launch attempts were thwarted by storms and cyclones. The balloon, designed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) to detect ultra-high energy cosmic particles from beyond the galaxy as they penetrate the earth’s atmosphere, is expected to circle the planet two or three times. “The origin of these particles is a great mystery that we’d like to solve. Do they come from massive black holes at the centre of galaxies? Tiny, fast-spinning stars? Or somewhere else?”

Angela Olinto, a University of Chicago professor and lead investigator on the project, said in a statement. The balloon’s monitoring was only the start of a long quest which would next involve a space mission currently being designed by Nasa, she added.