The Aerocene Explorer is a tethered-flight starter kit for personal solar-powered atmospheric exploration. Inside each portable backpack is everything needed to float an Explorer inflatable sculpture using solar and infrared radiation. Like all of artist Tomás Saraceno’s Aerocene sculptures, the Explorer floats without burning fossil fuels, helium and other rare gases.

The Explorer is designed to engage participants in thinking-through-making, to stimulate imaginative responses to energy independence and to impart information about solar balloon flight, thermodynamics, meteorology and art practices in a multidisciplinary way. Equipped with sensors, it can also be used to measure atmospheric data or to understand wind currents.