Testbed for High-Acuity Imaging and Stable Photometry and Image-Motion Compensation (THAI-SPICE)
Abstract
Dr. Eliot Young of Southwest Research institute (SwRI) is the PI of a proposal entitled: Testbed for High-Acuity Imaging and Stable Photometry and Image-Motion Compensation (THAI-SPICE). The main goal of this larger project is to build and demonstrate a fine-pointing system for stratospheric payloads to enable diffraction-limited performance by balloon-borne telescopes. This proposal from MIT Lincoln Laboratory (LL) was as a Co-Investigation of this Sub-Orbital Mission, within the Astronomy and Physics Research and Analysis Program (APRA) and was to furnish to NASA an electronic camera using orthogonal-transfer charge-coupled devices (OTCCD), with a high charge-transfer efficiency (CTE), to stabilize the images acquired by a balloon-borne telescope flying at approximately 120,000 ft. The camera, which has high sensitivity and low noise, will be integrated with the SwRI telescope as government-furnished equipment and will be able to integrate photons arriving from dim stars and other objects over long periods of time. This will enable the acquisition of images with jitter of less than 1 arcsecond. It will be a significant advance for both NASA and astronomy, in general, to have balloon-borne, diffraction-limited telescopes that are free of atmospheric aberrations operating at a much lower cost than similar-aperture satellite-borne telescopes. MIT LL provided the CCID77 and built the prototype camera, in which it was housed, to SwRI through NASA, in the summer of 2020. The balloon launch was to take place in the fall of 2020, but was delayed until the fall of 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on the NASA balloon launch schedule. The camera has worked well on the ground and has been integrated into the balloon payload. This has completed the obligations of MIT LL to the program.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 21, 2021
- Accession Number
- AD1128567
Entities
People
- J. A. Gregory
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology