The Balloon-Borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope Observatory
Ian Lowe, Gabriele Coppi, Peter A. R. Ade, Peter C. Ashton, Jason E., Austermann, James Beall, Susan Clark, Erin G. Cox, Mark J. Devlin, Simon, Dicker, Bradley J. Dober, Valentina Fanfani, Laura M. Fissel, Nicholas, Galitzki, Jiansong Gao, Brandon Hensley, Johannes Hubmayr

TL;DR
The BLAST Observatory is a lightweight, balloon-borne polarimeter with advanced cryogenic detectors designed for ultra-long duration flights to study dust and polarized submillimeter sky from high altitudes.
Contribution
It introduces a novel lightweight optical system and cryogenic receiver with a large array of MKIDs, enabling extended high-altitude observations for submillimeter astronomy.
Findings
Design for 31-day ultra-long balloon flight
Integration of 8,274 MKIDs cooled to 100mK
High-altitude access to polarized submillimeter sky
Abstract
The BLAST Observatory is a proposed superpressure balloon-borne polarimeter designed for a future ultra-long duration balloon campaign from Wanaka, New Zealand. To maximize scientific output while staying within the stringent superpressure weight envelope, BLAST will feature new 1.8m off-axis optical system contained within a lightweight monocoque structure gondola. The payload will incorporate a 300L He cryogenic receiver which will cool 8,274 microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) to 100mK through the use of an adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR) in combination with a He sorption refrigerator all backed by a liquid helium pumped pot operating at 2K. The detector readout utilizes a new Xilinx RFSOC-based system which will run the next-generation of the BLAST-TNG KIDPy software. With this instrument we aim to answer outstanding questions about dust dynamics as…
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