Related papers: Testing a Prototype 1U CubeSat on a Stratospheric …

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol) was a suborbital experiment designed to map magnetic fields in order to study their role in star formation processes. BLASTPol made detailed polarization…

This paper details a significant milestone towards maturing a buoyant aerial robotic platform, or aerobot, for flight in the Venus clouds. We describe two flights of our subscale altitude-controlled aerobot, fabricated from the materials…

The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) experiment is a novel approach for the detection of cosmic ray antiparticles. A prototype GAPS experiment (pGAPS) was successfully flown on a high-altitude balloon in June of 2012. The goals of…

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) is a sub-orbital experiment designed to study the process of star formation in local galaxies (including the Milky Way) and in galaxies at cosmological distances. Using a 2-m…

Balloon-borne astronomy offers an attractive option for experiments that require precise pointing and attitude stabilization, due to a large reduction in the atmospheric interference observed by ground-based systems as well as the low-cost…

Great efforts are currently being channeled into ground- and balloon-based CMB experiments, mainly to explore anisotropy on small angular scales and polarization. To optimize instrumental design and assess experimental prospects, it is…

This paper addresses the lack of a general methodology for the controller synthesis of an optical instrument on-board a stratospheric balloon-borne platform, such as a telescope or siderostat, to meet pointing requirements that are becoming…

The testing of atmosphere-breathing electric propulsion intakes is an important step in the development of functional propulsion systems which provide sustained drag compensation in very low Earth orbits. To make satellite operations more…

Cosmic-ray background fluxes were modeled based on existing measurements and theories and are presented here. The model, originally developed for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) Balloon Experiment, covers the entire solid…

We observed diffuse cosmic and atmospheric gamma rays at balloon altitudes with the Sub-MeV gamma-ray Imaging Loaded-on-balloon Experiment I (SMILE-I) as the first step toward a future all-sky survey with a high sensitivity. SMILE-I…

The Extreme Universe Space Observatory on a Super Pressure Balloon (EUSO-SPB1) is the second balloon pathfinder of the JEM-EUSO collaboration. It is a nadir pointing UV telescope which aims at observing Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR)…

The goal of the Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS) CubeSat is to explore the energy distribution of soft X-ray (SXR) emissions from the quiescent Sun, active regions, and during solar flares, and to model the impact on Earth's…

Astrophysical measurements away from the 1 AU orbit of Earth can enable several astrophysical science cases that are challenging or impossible to perform from Earthbound platforms, including: building a detailed understanding of the…

EUSO-SPB1 was released on April 24th, 2017, from the NASA balloon launch site in Wanaka (New Zealand) and landed on the South Pacific Ocean on May 7th. The data collected by the instruments onboard the balloon were analyzed to search UV…

The JEM-EUSO Collaboration aims at studying Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) from space. To reach this goal, a series of pathfinder missions has been developed to prove the observation principle and to raise the technological readiness…

The Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS) is a 3-Unit (3U) CubeSat developed at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU). Over 40 students contributed to the project with…

Several payloads for hard X-ray (20-600 keV) imaging with coded aperture telescopes have been developed for balloon flight observations of cosmic x-ray sources. We briefly review the characteristics of these, particularly the EXITE2 system.…

Current experiments aimed at measuring the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) use cryogenic detector arrays and cold optical systems to boost the mapping speed of the sky survey. For these reasons, large volume cryogenic…

The scientific mission of ESTCube-1, launched in May 2013, is to measure the Electric solar wind sail (E-sail) force in orbit. The experiment is planned to push forward the development of E-sail, a propulsion method recently invented at the…

The Subarcsecond Telescope And BaLloon Experiment, STABLE, is the fine stage of a guidance system for a high-altitude ballooning platform designed to demonstrate subarcsecond pointing stability, over one minute using relatively dim guide…