Case Study
BLAST: Balloon borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope
Scope
Dynamic Structures designed and built the telescope’s carriage and aiming system. Never before has a flight of this kind been made with this level of scientific equipment and payload weight. NASA launched a new generation telescope made possible by sophisticated engineering expertise from Dynamic Structures. BLAST stands for Balloon – Borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope; the balloon’s volume is 37 million cubic feet, the size of a 33-story building. BLAST contains a gondola designed by Dynamic Structures, that safely carries the ultra-sensitive equipment, including 2-metre mirror, large-format bolometer arrays that operate at 250, 350 and 500 µm, and a DS designed sighting system which keeps the telescope pointing precisely.
CLIENT
Universities of BC, Toronto, Pennsylvania & the Canadian Space Agency
LOCATION
Sweden, Antarctica
Challenge
Measure photometric redshifts, rest-frame FIR luminosities and star formation rates of high-redshift starburst galaxies, thereby constraining the evolutionary history of those galaxies that produce the FIR/submillimeter background. Measure cold pre-stellar sources associated with the earliest stages of star and planet formation. Make high-resolution maps of diffuse galactic emission over a wide range of galactic latitudes. Observe solar system objects including planets, large asteroids, and trans-Neptunian objects.
Solution
BLAST’s first scientific flight was launched by NASA on June 11, 2005 in northern Sweden. It traveled across the Atlantic to Canada’s Northwest Territories at an altitude of 40 kilometers above Earth. The gondola and directional sighting system worked flawlessly and landed intact. Never before has a flight of this kind been made with this level of scientific equipment and payload weight.
Benefits
This flight excited the scientific community because the Canadian solution, designed by DS engineers, demonstrated that sophisticated instruments can be flown in near space at a relatively low cost. It is providing the first sensitive large-area submillimeter survey at these wavelengths. The engineering for BLAST is so sound that it is able to be used over and over again. BLAST made its second scientific flight on December 21, 2006 from McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
