Scientific ballooning in India

A summary of the scientific ballooning activities in India is presented in this paper. The capabilities of the National Balloon Facility (NBF) at Hyderabad in India which designs, fabricates and launches balloons as well as provides tracking and data acquisition facilities, are described. A summary of the successful balloon flights carried out in last four years for scientific experiments, is presented. Future plans for the upgradation of facilities at NBF are also briefly described. Finally, some of the scientific results obtained from balloon observations in the area of far-infrared astronomy and x-ray astronomy are highlighted.