Pre-flight integration and characterization of the SPIDER balloon-borne telescope

• Main Authors: Rahlin, A. S., Bock, J. J., Crill, B. P., Doré, O., Filippini, J. P., Golwala, S., Hristov, V. V., Mason, P. V., Moncelsi, L., Morford, T. A., O'Brient, R., Tucker, R. S.
• Other Authors: Holland, Wayne S., Zmuidzinas, Jonas
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) 2014
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/87251/; https://authors.library.caltech.edu/87251/1/915313.pdf; https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20180620-083924426

We present the results of integration and characterization of the Spider instrument after the 2013 pre-flight campaign. Spider is a balloon-borne polarimeter designed to probe the primordial gravitational wave signal in the degree-scale B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background. With six independent telescopes housing over 2000 detectors in the 94 GHz and 150 GHz frequency bands, Spider will map 7.5% of the sky with a depth of 11 to 14 μK•arcmin at each frequency, which is a factor of ~5 improvement over Planck. We discuss the integration of the pointing, cryogenic, electronics, and power sub-systems, as well as pre-flight characterization of the detectors and optical systems. Spider is well prepared for a December 2014 flight from Antarctica, and is expected to be limited by astrophysical foreground emission, and not instrumental sensitivity, over the survey region.