High-altitude balloon experiments are becoming very popular among universities and research institutes as they can be used for testing instruments eventually intended for space, and for simple astronomical observations of Solar System objects like the Moon, comets, and asteroids, difficult to observe from the ground due to atmosphere. Further, they are one of the best platforms for atmospheric studies. In this experiment, we build a simple 1U CubeSat and, by flying it on a high-altitude balloon to an altitude of about 30 km, where the total payload weighted 4.9 kg and examine how some parameters, such as magnetic field, humidity, temperature or pressure, vary as a function of altitude. We also calibrate the magnetometer to remove the hard iron and soft iron errors. Such experiments and studies through a stratospheric balloon flights can also be used to study the performance of easily available commercial sensors in extreme conditions as well. We present the results of the first flight, which helped us study the functionality of the various sensors and electronics at low temperatures reaching about -40 degrees Celsius. Further the motion of the payload has been tracked throughout this flight. This experiment took place on 8 March 2020 from the CREST campus of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore. Using the results from this flight, we identify and rectify the errors to obtain better results from the subsequent flights.
Balloon experiments are an economically feasible method of conducting observations in astronomy that are not possible from the ground. The astronomical payload may include a telescope, a detector, and a pointing/stabilization system. Determining the attitude of the payload is of primary importance in such applications, to accurately point the detector/telescope to the desired direction. This is especially important in generally unstable lightweight balloon flights. However, the conditions at float altitudes, which can be reached by zero pressure balloons, could be more stable, enabling accurat…
Observations that require large physical instrument dimensions and/or a considerable amount of cryogens, as it is for example the case for high spatial resolution far infrared astronomy, currently still face technological limits for their execution from space. The high cost and finality of space missions furthermore call for a very low risk approach and entail long development times. For certain spectral regions, prominently including the mid- to far-infrared as well as parts of the ultraviolet, stratospheric balloons offer a flexible and affordable complement to space telescopes, with short d…
A new opportunity for astronomy, cosmology, physics, and atmospheric observations is the possibility to fly stratospheric payloads at 30 - 40 km of altitude during the polar night. The absence of solar irradiation for long periods, and the extremely low temperature and stable environment of the winter stratosphere represent ideal environmental conditions while performing astrophysical observations. Here we present a small and efficient platform, able to communicate, supply power and navigate in the harsh environment of the polar stratosphere. After a balloon failure in January 2017, the payloa…
This paper presents the concept of a community-accessible stratospheric balloon-based observatory that is currently under preparation by a consortium of European research institutes and industry. The planned European Stratospheric Balloon Observatory (ESBO) aims at complementing the current landscape of scientific ballooning activities by providing a service-centered infrastructure tailored towards broad astronomical use. In particular, the concept focuses on reusable platforms with exchangeable instruments and telescopes performing regular flights and an operations concept that provides resea…
Design and implementation of a real-time onboard system for a stratospheric balloon mission using commercial off-the-self components and a model-based approach
本文介绍HERCCULES平流层气球任务的星载软件，采用基于模型和组件的方法及ESA的TASTE工具链，在Raspberry Pi 4B上控制约60个COTS设备，满足实时要求并通过ESA标准验证。
High altitude scientific balloons offer unique opportunities to carry scientific payloads to stratospheric altitudes at a cost several orders of magnitude lower than corresponding satellite missions. Balloon-borne payloads are easy to implement allowing quick experiment turn-around times and inexpensive reflights can be conducted as payload is most of the times recovered. In addition, in-situ and high resolution spatial and temporal measurements of the earth's atmosphere can be made that might not be feasible with satellites. It is also used as a testbed to prove technologies for future satell…
SAMPLE -- Stratospheric Altitude Microbiology Probe for Life Existence -- A Method of Collection of Stratospheric Samples Using Balloon-Borne Payload System
Balloon-borne telescopes present unique thermal design challenges which are a combination of those present for both space and ground telescopes. At altitudes of 35-40 km, convection effects are minimal and difficult to characterize. Radiation and conduction are the predominant heat transfer mechanisms reducing the thermal design options. For long duration flights payload mass is a function of power consumption making it an important optimization parameter. SuperBIT, or the Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope, aims to study weak lensing using a 0.5m modified Dall-Kirkham telescope ca…
The Columbia Scientific Ballooning Facility operates stratospheric balloon flights out of McMurdo Station in Antarctica. We use balloon trajectory data from 40 flights between 1991 and 2016 to give the first quantification of trajectory statistics. We provide the probabilities as a function of time for the payload to be between given latitudes, and we quantify the southernmost and northernmost latitudes a payload is likely to attain. We find that for the median flight duration of 19 days, there is 90% probability the balloon would drift as far south as $88^{\circ}$S or as far north as $71^{\ci…
Observations that require large physical instrument dimensions and/or a considerable amount of cryogens, as it is the case for high spatial resolution far infrared (FIR) astronomy, currently still face technological limits for their execution from space. Angular resolution and available observational capabilities are particularly affected. Balloon-based platforms promise to complement the existing observational capabilities by offering means to deploy comparatively large telescopes with comparatively little effort, including other advantages such as the possibility to regularly refill cryogens…
Stratospheric balloons offer accessible and affordable platforms for observations in atmosphere-constrained wavelength ranges. At the same time, they can serve as an effective step for technology demonstration towards future space applications of instruments and other hardware. The Stratospheric UV Demonstrator of an Imaging Observatory (STUDIO) is a balloon-borne platform and mission carrying an imaging micro-channel plate (MCP) detector on a 0.5 m aperture telescope. STUDIO is currently planned to fly during the summer turnaround conditions over Esrange, Sweden, in the 2022 season. For detai…
During certain times of the year at middle and low latitudes, winds in the upper stratosphere move in nearly the opposite direction than the wind in the lower stratosphere. Here we present a method for maintaining a high-altitude balloon platform in near station-keeping mode that utilizes this stratospheric wind shear. The proposed method places a balloon-borne science platform high in the stratosphere connected by a lightweight, high-strength tether to a "tug" vehicle located in the lower or middle stratosphere. Using aerodynamic control surfaces, wind-induced aerodynamic forces on the tug ca…
At a fraction the total cost of an equivalent orbital mission, scientific balloon-borne platforms, operating above 99.7% of the Earth's atmosphere, offer attractive, competitive, and effective observational capabilities -- namely space-like resolution, transmission, and backgrounds -- that are well suited for modern astronomy and cosmology. SuperBIT is a diffraction-limited, wide-field, 0.5 m telescope capable of exploiting these observing conditions in order to provide exquisite imaging throughout the near-IR to near-UV. It utilizes a robust active stabilization system that has consistently d…
The Balloon-Borne Cryogenic Telescope Testbed (BOBCAT) is a stratospheric balloon payload to develop technology for a future cryogenic suborbital observatory. A series of flights are intended to establish ultra-light dewar performance and open-aperture observing techniques for large (3--5 meter diameter) cryogenic telescopes at infrared wavelengths. An initial flight in 2019 demonstrated bulk transfer of liquid nitrogen and liquid helium at stratospheric altitudes. An 827 kg payload carried 14 liters of liquid nitrogen (LN2) and 268 liters of liquid helium (LHe) in pressurized storage dewars t…
We present SABAT ("Sapienza" Balloon Trajectory Simulation Code), a Fortran software for the simulation of zero-pressure scientific balloon trajectories at stratospheric altitudes. Particular attention is made to the correct reproduction of the balloon ascending phase to the floating altitude. In order to obtain trajectories in agreement with those monitored during actual balloon launches and flights, SABAT features a balloon dynamical and geometric model, and a thermal model for the heat exchanges between the vehicle and the surrounding environment. In addition, both a synthetic description o…
We describe the design and in--flight performance of the cryostat and the self-contained $^{3}$He refrigerator for the OLIMPO balloon--borne experiment, a spectrophotometer to measure the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in clusters of galaxies. The $^{3}$He refrigerator provides the 0.3 K operation temperature for the four arrays of kinetic inductance detectors working in 4 bands centered at 150, 250, 350 and 460 GHz. The cryostat provides the 1.65 K base temperature for the $^{3}$He refrigerator, and cools down the reimaging optics and the filters chain at about 2 K. The integrated system was desig…
PoGOLite is a hard X-ray polarimeter operating in the 25-100 keV energy band. The instrument design is optimised for the observation of compact astrophysical sources. Observations are conducted from a stabilised stratospheric balloon platform at an altitude of approximately 40 km. The primary targets for first balloon flights of a reduced effective area instrument are the Crab and Cygnus-X1. The polarisation of incoming photons is determined using coincident Compton scattering and photo-absorption events reconstructed in an array of plastic scintillator detector cells surrounded by a bismuth g…
We present a publicly-available toolkit of flight-proven hardware and software to retrieve 5 TB of data or small physical samples from a stratospheric balloon platform. Before launch, a capsule is attached to the balloon, and rises with it. Upon remote command, the capsule is released and descends via parachute, continuously transmitting its location. Software to predict the trajectory can be used to select a safe but accessible landing site. We dropped two such capsules from the SuperBIT telescope, in September 2019. The capsules took ~37 minutes to descend from ~30 km altitude. They drifted …
Polarimetric observations of celestial sources in the hard X-ray band stand to provide new information on emission mechanisms and source geometries. PoGO+ is a Compton scattering polarimeter (20-150 keV) optimised for the observation of the Crab (pulsar and wind nebula) and Cygnus X-1 (black hole binary), from a stratospheric balloon-borne platform launched from the Esrange Space Centre in summer 2016. Prior to flight, the response of the polarimeter has been studied with polarised and unpolarised X-rays allowing a Geant4-based simulation model to be validated. The expected modulation factor f…
FIREBall-2 is a stratospheric balloon-borne 1-m telescope coupled to a UV multi-object slit spectrograph designed to map the faint UV emission surrounding z~0.7 galaxies and quasars through their Lyman-alpha line emission. This spectro-imager had its first launch on September 22nd 2018 out of Ft. Sumner, NM, USA. Because the balloon was punctured, the flight was abruptly interrupted. Instead of the nominal 8 hours above 32 km altitude, the instrument could only perform science acquisition for 45 minutes at this altitude. In addition, the shape of the deflated balloon, combined with a full Moon…
We are developing a compact UV Imager using light weight components, that can be flown on a small CubeSat or a balloon platform. The system has a lens-based optics that can provide an aberration-free image over a wide field of view. The backend instrument is a photon counting detector with off-the-shelf MCP, CMOS sensor and electronics. We are using a Z-stack MCP with a compact high voltage power supply and a phosphor screen anode, which is read out by a CMOS sensor and the associated electronics. The instrument can be used to observe solar system objects and detect bright transients from the …
The Debris Disk Explorer (DDX) is a proposed balloon-borne investigation of debris disks around nearby stars. Debris disks are analogs of the Asteroid Belt (mainly rocky) and Kuiper Belt (mainly icy) in our Solar System. DDX will measure the size, shape, brightness, and color of tens of disks. These measurements will enable us to place the Solar System in context. By imaging debris disks around nearby stars, DDX will reveal the presence of perturbing planets via their influence on disk structure, and explore the physics and history of debris disks by characterizing the size and composition of …
We describe the SPIDER flight cryostat, which is designed to cool six millimeter-wavelength telescopes during an Antarctic long-duration balloon flight. The cryostat, one of the largest to have flown on a stratospheric payload, uses liquid helium-4 to deliver cooling power to stages at 4.2 and 1.6 K. Stainless steel capillaries facilitate a high flow impedance connection between the main liquid helium tank and a smaller superfluid tank, allowing the latter to operate at 1.6 K as long as there is liquid in the 4.2 K main tank. Each telescope houses a closed cycle helium-3 adsorption refrigerato…
An attitude determination system for balloon-borne experiments is presented. The system provides pointing information in azimuth and elevation for instruments flying on stratospheric balloons over Antarctica. In-flight attitude is given by the real-time combination of readings from star cameras, a magnetometer, sun sensors, GPS, gyroscopes, tilt sensors and an elevation encoder. Post-flight attitude reconstruction is determined from star camera solutions, interpolated by the gyroscopes using an extended Kalman Filter. The multi-sensor system was employed by the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Sub…
The "Airships: A New Horizon for Science" study at the Keck Institute for Space Studies investigated the potential of a variety of airships currently operable or under development to serve as observatories and science instrumentation platforms for a range of space, atmospheric, and Earth science. The participants represent a diverse cross-section of the aerospace sector, NASA, and academia. Over the last two decades, there has been wide interest in developing a high altitude, stratospheric lighter-than-air (LTA) airship that could maneuver and remain in a desired geographic position (i.e., "st…
We describe the cryogenic half-wave plate rotation mechanisms built for and used in Spider, a polarization-sensitive balloon-borne telescope array that observed the Cosmic Microwave Background at 95 GHz and 150 GHz during a stratospheric balloon flight from Antarctica in January 2015. The mechanisms operate at liquid helium temperature in flight. A three-point contact design keeps the mechanical bearings relatively small but allows for a large (305 mm) diameter clear aperture. A worm gear driven by a cryogenic stepper motor allows for precise positioning and prevents undesired rotation when th…
Sunrise III: Instrument, mission, data, and first results
Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung（马克斯·普朗克太阳系研究所）；Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, CSIC（安达卢西亚天体物理研究所，西班牙高等科学研究委员会）；Spanish Space Solar Physics Consortium（西班牙空间太阳物理联盟）；National Astronomical Observatory of Japan（日本国立天文台）；Department of Astronomy, The University of Tokyo（东京大学天文学系）；Department of Astronomical Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI)（高级研究院（SOKENDAI）天体科学系）；Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学应用物理实验室）；Institut für Sonnenphysik (KIS)（太阳物理研究所）
Duderstadt et al. [2016b] comment that the Melott et al. [2016] study of nitrate formation by solar proton events (SPEs) and comparison with the ice core archive is "fundamentally flawed," because it does not include pre-existing HNO3 in the stratosphere. We show that they exaggerate both the enhancement predicted by our findings and pre-industrial HNO3 levels in their model, and fail to prove this assertion. Our feasibility study matched expected SPE nitrate production with ground truth measurements. It is not clear that their approach is more realistic and absence of a detailed mechanism doe…
