astronomy

Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope

Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope rather than just read about it. In short: The Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) is a highly stabilized, high-resolution telescope that operates in the stratosphere via NASA's superpressure balloon (SPB) system. At approximately 35 km altitude above sea level, the football-stadium-sized balloon carries SuperBIT (at 3500 lbs) to a suborbital environment above 99.2% of the Earth's atmosphere in order to obtain space-quality imaging.

Key takeaways

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Reference excerpt

The Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) is a highly stabilized, high-resolution telescope that operates in the stratosphere via NASA's superpressure balloon (SPB) system. At approximately 35 km altitude above sea level, the football-stadium-sized balloon carries SuperBIT (at 3500 lbs) to a suborbital environment above 99.2% of the Earth's atmosphere in order to obtain space-quality imaging. As a research instrument, SuperBIT's primary science goal is to provide insight into the distribution of dark matter in galaxy clusters and throughout the large-scale structure of the universe. As demonstrated by numerous test flights, the survey data generated by SuperBIT is expected to have similar quality and data collection efficiency as the Hubble Space Telescope while complementing surveys from other up-and-coming observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (formerly LSST), and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (formerly WFIRST).

Technical details and science goals SuperBIT is a 0.5 m, wide-field, diffraction-limited balloon-borne telescope that operates within the stratosphere - an altitude of nearly 34 km - to achieve space-like operating conditions and performance. With optical sensitivity from the near infrared (900 nm) to the near ultraviolet (300 nm), SuperBIT aims to make precise weak gravitational lensing measurements of galaxy clusters in order to infer the presence and relative quantity of dark matter in these clusters, as well as the large-scale structure of the universe. To achieve high-precision measurements from a balloon-borne environment, the SuperBIT gondola – at roughly 3500 lbs – stabilizes its telescope to sub-arcsecond precision (akin to a three degree-of-freedom Steadicam) while sophisticated optics further stabilize the SuperBIT camera to < 50 milliarcseconds. A useful analogy for this level of stability is threading a needle at the top of the CN Tower from Toronto's Centre Island (roughly 2.5 km away) and keeping the thread from touching the sides of the needle for up to 60 minutes. This level of precision, coupled with diffraction-limited optics and a large 0.5-degree field-of-view, enables SuperBIT to undertake astronomical surveys at a cadence and quality that rivals the Hubble Space Telescope. In this sense, one of SuperBIT's over-arching science and technology development goals is to make rapidly developed yet highly capable suborbital astronomical platforms more accessible to the astronomical community at a fraction of the cost of an equivalent space- or satellite-based system of equivalent capability. SuperBIT completed a successful long duration science mission after launching from Wānaka, New Zealand in March 2023 in one of the longest missions ever flown on NASA's superpressure balloon (SPB) system. The benefit of this relatively novel SPB system over conventional zero-pressure balloon systems is that stratospheric operations can be supported through diurnal cycles for more than 30 days, enabling SuperBIT to collect the images and data necessary to meet weak-lensing science requirements.

History and development

SuperBIT was originally developed at the University of Toronto led by Barth Netterfield's Balloon Astronomy Group (originally named the Balloon-borne Imaging Test-bed) with contributions and engineering development from UTIAS. With design efforts commencing in summer of 2012, the original BIT team fabricated, assembled, integrated, tested, and launched BIT on its maiden engineering test flight in 2015. Launch took place from Timmins, Ontario and was facilitated by the Canadian Space Agency and CNES. Following this engineering success, SuperBIT was refurbished and relaunched in the summers of 2016 and 2018 with continual engineering improvements and refinement of overall instrument performance in collaboration with Princeton University, Durham University's Centre for Advanced Instrumentation, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). For both of these engineering test flights, launch took place from Palestine, Texas and was facilitated by NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. In 2019, SuperBIT had its final science qualification flight, which was the first flight that utilized space-qualified telescope optics for science imaging, and an upgraded cameras. With SuperBIT's flight tested stabilization system, the SuperBIT 2019 flight from Timmins, Ontario with CNES-CSA demonstrated a robust ability to perform wide-field, diffraction-limited imaging from the stratosphere in optical bands as well as in the near-infrared and near-ultraviolet. This was the final test flight necessary to qualify the SuperBIT system for science operations during its upcoming and final long duration flight from Wānaka, New Zealand, the results from which will offer significant contributions to galaxy cluster studies, weak lensing science, and dark matter cosmology. The budget for construction and development, through the first mission, is about $5 million.

First Mission The first official mission was launched in on 16 April 2023 from Wānaka, New Zealand. The goal was to stay aloft for three months and perform a soft landing, so the telescope could be re-used again in future missions. The telescope communicated with earth via two systems: the Starlink satellite system, and the Starlink satellite constellation, and the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). The connection to Starlink was lost on 1 May 2023, and the connection to TDRSS became unstable on 24 May 2023. During the mission, the telescope obtained near-UV and optical imaging of galaxy clusters and other astronomical objects. Due to the lack of connection to the ground, a decision was made to land the telescope early, and it descended on 25 May 2023, in Argentina. The telescope was destroyed during the landing; it was dragged along the ground for 3km because the parachute failed to separate upon landing. The complete dataset was recovered from small capsules containing backup copies of the data that dropped by parachute, although the flight computer storage systems were also successfully recovered. A small portion of the data from this flight were featured as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for April 17, 2023

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Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope

In research: Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Balloon-borne telescopes, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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Frequently asked questions

What is Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope in simple terms?

Why does Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope.