SPAS - EUSO-BALLOON

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EUSO-BALLOON is a partnership project of the international consortium JEM-EUSO (Space mission scheduled for 2017) and CNES that aims to fly over several campaigns in 2014, a prototype fluorescence telescope aboard a stratospheric balloon.

Objectives

To test all the technologies developed for JEM-EUSO under very severe operating conditions (stratosphere), partly representative of some conditions that would have to meet any telescope fluorescence light space (accommodated on the ISS or in free flight on a satellite) TECHNOLOGICAL DEMONSTRATOR
To measure the intensity of the atmospheric airglow with an appropriate angular resolution for JEM-EUSO, this continuous background requiring to be subtracted to any measured signal
To highlight the ability of such an instrument to detect air showers from space (above the measured background level from the Airglow).

Volume of wiew of the EUSO-BALLOON

International contribution

Over 50 people from Japan (RIKEN), France (LAL, OMEGA, APC, IRAP and CNES), Poland (NCBJ), South Korea (SKKU), Italy (INFN Napoli and Frascatti), Mexico (UNAM), Spain (UAH, IAC, INTA, MULTIDARK) and Germany (IAAT and KIT) are involved in the EUSO-BALLOON mission, led by CNES.

JEM-EUSO vs. EUSO-Balloon

A comparison between JEM-EUSO and EUSO-BALLOON parameters

EUSO-BALLOON Spanish contribution

The scientific groups involved in the EUSO-BALLOON Space Mission are the SPace and AStroparticles group at the University of Alcala (SPAS-UAH), the Intituto de Astroficica de Canarias (IAC) and the Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aeroespacial (INTA) in collaboration with the space company ORBITAL.

The Spanish contribution to the EUSO-BALLOON mission is the IR camera, which is devoted to take IR pictures of the scenario and determine if the cosmic ray telescope measurement is affected by clouds interaction with the Extensive Air Shower. The aim of this contribution is:

To validate the IR camera mission concept
To obtain real data with ULIS UL 04171 micro bolometer IR camera (used in JEM-EUSO IR camera)
To validate and optimize Temperature Retrieval Algorithms
To validate and optimize Stereo Vision Technique
To validate and assess part of Calibration Strategy (micro Shutter)