This week in 2013, the High-Energy Replicated Optics for Exploring the Sun, HEROES mission, a collaborative effort between NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and Goddard Space Flight Center, launched aboard the Columbia Scientific Balloon in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. An advanced version of NASA’s High Energy Replicated Optics telescope, HEROES was designed to investigate the scale of high-energy processes in a pulsar wind nebula by mapping the angular vortex of hard X-ray emission; the acceleration and transport of energetic electrons in solar flares using hard X-ray imaging spectroscopy; the hard X-ray properties of astrophysical targets such as X-ray binaries and active galactic nuclei; and electron acceleration in the non-flaring solar corona by searching for the hard X-ray signature of energetic electrons. Here, the HEROES payload awaits launch as the Columbia helium balloon inflates. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating, and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage. (NASA)