NASA has selected nine scientific teams to work on future high-altitude balloon and sounding rocket payloads. The selected proposals address a wide range of astrophysical mysteries from dark matter and cosmic-ray antiprotons to studies of galaxy clusters and supernova remnants.

The recipients of the awards will develop payloads using detectors and instruments of their own design. Within several years, they will fly the payloads on sounding rockets or long-duration balloons. These suborbital investigations provide unique opportunities for executing science investigations and advancing the state-of-the-art in the areas of future spaceflight detectors and supporting technologies. The Sounding Rocket and Balloon Program offices at Wallops manage the sounding rocket and balloon flight operations, which are implemented via support contracts. For abstracts of these projects and the involved scientists, head over to to this NASA website.