Thermal design and performance of the balloon-borne large aperture submillimeter telescope for polarimetry BLASTPol

• Published in: SPIE Proceedings, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V
• Main Authors: Soler, J. D., Moncelsi, L.
• Other Authors: Stepp, Larry M., Gilmozzi, Roberto, Hall, Helen J.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) 2014
• Subjects: BLAST Pol; submillimeter; polarimeter; balloon-borne telescope; thermal design; Canada; Soler; Antarc*; Antarctica; National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2055431

We present the thermal model of the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol). This instrument was successfully own in two circumpolar flights from McMurdo, Antarctica in 2010 and 2012. During these two flights, BLASTPol obtained unprecedented information about the magnetic field in molecular clouds through the measurement of the polarized thermal emission of interstellar dust grains. The thermal design of the experiment addresses the stability and control of the payload necessary for this kind of measurement. We describe the thermal modeling of the payload including the sun-shielding strategy. We present the in-flight thermal performance of the instrument and compare the predictions of the model with the temperatures registered during the flight. We describe the difficulties of modeling the thermal behavior of the balloon-borne platform and establish landmarks that can be used in the design of future balloon-borne instruments. © 2014 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Date Published: 22 July 2014. The BLAST collaboration acknowledges the support of NASA through grant nunbers NNX13AE50G S03 and NNX09AB98G, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Leverhulme Trust through the Research Project Grant F/00 407/BN, Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Innovation Trust, the Rhode Island Space Grant Consortium, and the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs. F. Poidevin thanks the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under the Consolider-Ingenio project CSD2010-00064 (EPI: Exploring the Physics of Inflation) for its support. J. D. Soler acknowledges the support of the European Research Council under the European Union 's Seventh Framework Programme FP7 /2007-2013/ ERC grant agreement number 267934. J. D. Soler also thanks Scott Cannon and Taylor Martin for their valuable advice on Thermal Desktop®. We would also like to thank the Columbia ...