This morning, academics, students and scientists from all over the world, watched years of hard work and dreams, not to mention millions of dollars, go down in smoke, when their attempt to launch a Space balloon went drastically wrong.

The balloon, a collaboration between NASA and University of California, Berkeley and some Taiwanese Universities, was being launched to study gamma rays, 25 miles in Space, and was believed to have contained a powerful telescope that costs between $8mm to $12mm USD.

The incident, which occurred this morning, at a remote location in Alice Springs, Australia, happened as the balloon was being filled up with air. It somehow ripped from its mooring and flew across for about 500meters before collapsing on a fence and overturning a parked car. Fortunately, nobody was injured in the incident.

While the scientists are not sure what happened, they believe the crash was caused by a strong gust of wind that just ripped the balloon out. They are currently trying to salvage some of the equipment and are hopeful that they will get all the damage repaired and try again, as early as next month. We sure hope they succeed!

sources:usatoday.com,telegraph.co.uk, australian broadcasting corp.