T0050-B Flight Demonstration of an Integrated Camera and Solid-State Fine Steering System

Program start date is on hold until Space Act Agreement is signed.  Placeholder date of January 2014 is used as placeholder.

The goal of this project is to test and demonstrate technologies for the stabilization of balloon-borne telescopes. At altitudes near 120,000 ft., NASA's balloon payloads float above 99.5% of the atmosphere, where there is virtually no image degradation due to atmospheric turbulence. In theory, large stratospheric telescopes could provide visible images as sharp as those obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope.