Paper 13094-167

To the stratosphere and beyond: super-pressure balloon flight overview for the Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT)

On demand | Presented live 18 June 2024

Abstract

The Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) is a diffraction limited 0.5m optical-to-near-UV telescope that was designed to study dark matter via cluster weak lensing. SuperBIT launched from Wanaka, NZ via NASA’s super pressure balloon technology in 2023 and remained in the stratosphere for 39 days. SuperBIT obtained multi-band images for 30 targets; data analysis to produce shear measurements for each target is ongoing. We provide an overview of the instrument commissioning process and performance. The first two days of the flight were used for payload characterization and telescope alignment after which the flight was dedicated to science observations. There are three subsystems for which we provide performance data: pointing, power, and thermal. SuperBIT consists of three nested frames which enable telescope pointing stability of 0.34” as well as a fine guidance sensor which produces a focal plane image stability of 0.055” over 300s exposures. The power system reached full charge every day and did not ever drop below 30%. All components remained within their temperature limits and actively controlled components remained at their set point within ~0.1K.

Presenter

Susan F. Redmond

Caltech (United States), Jet Propulsion Lab. (United States)

Dr. Redmond is a David and Ellen Lee Distinguished Scholar Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. She completed her BEng at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, MASc at the University of Toronto, and PhD at Princeton University. Her work focuses on the questions of “how did we get here?” and “are we alone?” via cluster weak lensing and directly imaging exoplanets. Susan works on the optical system characterization for the Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope which includes analysis of the 39 days of data acquired during the 2023 science flight. She also works on developing and implementing novel focal plane wavefront estimation and control algorithms for exoplanet direct imaging adaptive optics systems as part of the Exoplanet Technology Laboratory at Caltech and the High Contrast Imaging Testbed team at JPL.

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