Related papers: Attitude determination for balloon-borne experimen…

This paper focuses on the attitude pointing control problem under pointing-forbidden constraints and performance constraints. The spacecraft is expected to align its sensor's boresight to a desired direction, while the terminal control…

We present the activities carried out to calibrate and characterise the performance of the elements of attitude control and measurement on board the Herschel spacecraft. The main calibration parameters and the evolution of the indicators of…

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a multi-messenger observatory at the South Pole. As preparation for an enhancement of its surface array, IceTop, a prototype station consisting of elevated scintillation panels and radio antennas has been…

Over the course of two flights, the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) made resolved maps of seven nearby (<25 Mpc) galaxies at 250, 350, and 500 microns. During its June 2005 flight from Sweden, BLAST observed a…

The BOOMERanG experiment is a stratospheric balloon telescope intended to measure the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy at angular scales between a few degrees and ten arcminutes. The experiment features a wide focal plane with 16…

The BESS-Polar spectrometer had its first successful balloon flight over Antarctica in December 2004. During the 8.5-day long-duration flight, almost 0.9 billion events were recorded and 1,520 antiprotons were detected in the energy range…

We have observed cosmic-ray electrons from 10 GeV to 800 GeV by a long duration balloon flight using Polar Patrol Balloon (PPB) in Antarctica. The observation was carried out for 13 days at an average altitude of 35 km in January 2004. The…

The Polarized Instrument for Long-wavelength Observation of the Tenuous interstellar medium (PILOT) is a balloon-borne experiment that aims to measure the polarized emission of thermal dust at a wavelength of 240 um (1.2 THz). The PILOT…

We present an analysis of the potential follow-up polarimetry microlensing observation to study the stellar atmospheres of the distant stars. First, we produce synthetic microlensing events using the Galactic model, stellar population, and…

EBEX is a NASA-funded balloon-borne experiment designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Observations will be made using 1432 transition edge sensor (TES) bolometric detectors read out with frequency…

The Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimetre Telescope (BLAST) will operate on a Long Duration Balloon platform with large format bolometer arrays at 250, 350 and 500 microns, initially using a 2m mirror, with plans to increase to 2.5m.…

The strength and vertical distribution of atmospheric turbulence is a key factor determining the performance of optical and infrared telescopes, with and without adaptive optics. Yet, this remains challenging to measure. We describe a new…

The measurement and characterization of the lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is key goal of the current and next generation of CMB experiments. We perform a case study of a three-channel balloon-borne CMB experiment…

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…

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…

Several of the current and next-generation cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments have polarimetric capability, promising to add to the finesse of precision cosmology. One of the contaminating Galactic foregrounds is thermal emission…

CubeSats are emerging as low-cost tools to perform astronomy, exoplanet searches and earth observation. These satellites can target an object for science observation for weeks on end. This is typically not possible on larger missions where…

The star tracker is generally affected by the atmospheric background light and the aerodynamic environment when working in near space, which results in missing stars or false stars. Moreover, high-speed maneuvering may cause star trailing,…

The general objective of this Ph.D. thesis is to study the dynamics and control of rigid and flexible spacecraft supported by a high-fidelity numerical simulation environment. The demand for greater attitude pointing precision, attitude…

Relative attitude formation control systems are developed for multiple spacecraft, based on the line-of-sight measurements between spacecraft in formation. The proposed control systems are unique in the sense that they do not require…