From August 12 to 23, 2025, the AirCore team from LMD had the opportunity to travel to the French-Canadian stratospheric balloon launch base in Timmins (Ontario, CANADA) to deploy the AirCore instrument, an atmospheric sampler carried under balloon. The instrument collects a column of air and thereby provides vertical profiles (from the surface up to about 30 km altitude) of greenhouse gas mixing ratios (CO₂, CH₄, CO) during the balloon’s descent.

Two versions of the instrument were deployed, corresponding to different vertical resolutions of the retrieved gas profiles: a 3 kg “Light” version, usually flown under a small balloon, and a 30 kg “High-Resolution” version integrated into a gondola of about 500 kg, flown under larger balloons.

This was made possible thanks to the collaboration of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and CNES, the respective operators of the SEB (Stratospheric Expandable Balloon) and BSO (Open Stratospheric Balloon) flights.

Our objectives were to initiate, if possible, a collaboration with the Canadian team for the regular measurement of greenhouse gases with the AirCore instrument, to deepen our understanding of the vertical distribution of greenhouse gases throughout the atmospheric column, and to contribute, as far as possible, to the calibration/validation of satellite instruments and to the evaluation of atmospheric chemistry/transport models.

We would like to express our gratitude to the CSA and CNES, the respective operators of the SEB and BSO flights, the local recovery team, and the various scientific teams who shared the gondola with us.

ASC: https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/fra/
CNES/BSO: https://cnes.fr/projets/ballons
AirCore: https://aircore.aeris-data.fr