The Balloon-Borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope Observatory

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 $^4$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 $^3$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 well as provide community access to the polarized submillimeter sky made possible by high-altitude observing unrestricted by atmospheric transmission. The BLAST Observatory is designed for a minimum 31-day flight of which 70$\%$ will be dedicated to observations for BLAST scientific goals and the remaining 30$\%$ will be open to proposals from the wider astronomical community through a shared-risk proposals program.