HOUSTON -- Late Thursday or early Friday morning, NASA scientists will launch a balloon in an attempt to find out more about the Perseids meteor shower.

Balloon flight also offers a live video feed available on the World Wide Web or in the southeastern United States on channel 58 with a cable-ready TV hooked to an antenna.

The Perseids meteor showers should peak about the time of the flight and are the result of debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle.

This weeks launch marks Marshall Space Flight Centers third effort to place a balloon aloft to capture meteorite data. The center flew a balloon during the November 1998 Leonid meteor shower and last April to serve as a comparison to the previous and upcoming mission.

The balloon should travel to about 110,000 feet and land about 30 miles from the space center after the mission. One of the missions objectives is to test how the scientific equipment performs at high altitude.

A video camera similar in design to the one aboard the Hubble Space Telescope will be carried aloft. Its wide angle lens will gather scientific data and provide images to viewers on the web and TV.

Another device will attempt to actually capture particles of the meteor shower.