Multi-sensor fusion for fine-guidance and milliarcsecond-level attitude estimation of balloon-borne telescopes
Year: 2026
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: Balloon-borne telescopes rely on fine-guidance systems to achieve milliarcsecond image stability despite residual disturbances from the balloon environment. In these systems, the Fast Steering Mirror (FSM) stabilizes the image in two focal-plane axes, but leaves systematic, field-dependent residual motion induced by boresight roll. This effect, referred to as roll leakage, becomes more important for wider fields of view. In this work, roll leakage is characterized using data from the 2023 Superpressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) science flight. SuperBIT is a 0.5-m near-ultraviolet to near-infrared telescope that demonstrated milliarcsecond-level image stability during its 45-night science flight. We find that passive focal-plane star-camera measurements correlate strongly with independent roll measurements across a large set of science exposures, showing that boresight roll frequently drives residual focal-plane motion. We then develop a simulation framework combining optical ray tracing, asynchronous guide-star measurements, estimation, and FSM control to study this behavior. The framework is used to compare single-star and multi-star guidance architectures under realistic flight disturbances. For the SuperBIT geometry, we find that multi-star estimation reduces average roll-induced science-field image motion by 31.8%, increasing to 77.4% for a representative geometry of GigaBIT, SuperBIT’s planned largeraperture successor. These results motivate further investigation of multi-star fine-guidance architectures for GigaBIT.
DOI: 10.1117/12.3103046
Authors: Philippe Voyer, Maya Amit, Steven J. Benton, Benjamin E. Boyd, Anthony M. Brown, Giulia Cerini, Paul Clark, Matthew Craigie, Christopher J. Damaren, Tim Eifler, Spencer W. Everett, Aurelien A. Fraisse, Leo W. H. Fung, Ajay S. Gill, Suren Gourapura, Eric Habjan, John W. Hartley, David Harvey, Bradley Holder, Eric M. Huff, Mathilde Jauzac, William C. Jones, David Lagattuta, Gavin Leroy, Jason S.-Y. Leung, Lun Li, Thuy Vy T. Luu, Richard Massey, Jacqueline E. McCleary, Adyn Miles, Johanna M. Nagy, C. Barth Netterfield, Emaad Paracha, Susan F. Redmond, Jason D. Rhodes, Andrew Robertson, L. Javier Romualdez, Sayan Saha, Jürgen Schmoll, Mohamed M. Shaaban, Ellen Sirks, Sut Ieng Tam, Simon Tartakovsky, Georgios N. Vassilakis, André Z. Vitorelli, Bryce J. Warren, Alfredo Zenteno
Institutions: Princeton University, Northeastern University, New York University, University of Toronto, Durham University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of Arizona, California Institute of Technology, National Research Council Canada, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Imperial College London, Case Western Reserve University, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, University of Cambridge, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, NSF NOIRLab
Language: English
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, California Institute of Technology, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, UK Research and Innovation, Durham University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Canadian Space Agency, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Science and Technology Facilities Council
OpenAlex ID: W7203942558