Design and construction of a carbon fiber gondola for the SPIDER balloon-borne telescope

Soler, J. D., Ade, P. A. R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5127-0401, Amiri, M., Benton, S. J., Bock, J. J., Bond, J. R., Bryan, S. A., Chiang, C., Contaldi, C. C., Crill, B. P., Dore, O. P., Farhang, M., Filippini, Jeffrey P., Fissel, L. M., Fraisse, A. A., Gambrel, A. E., Gandilo, N. N., Golwala, S., Gudmundsson, J. E., Halpern, M., Hasselfield, M., Hilton, G. C., Holmes, W. A., Hristov, V. V., Irwin, K. D., Jones, W. C., Kermish, Z. K., Kuo, C. -L., MacTavish, C. J., Mason, P. V., Megerian, K. G., Moncelsi, L., Morford, T., Nagy, J. M., Netterfield, C. B., Rahlin, A. S., Reintsema, C. D., Ruhl, J. E., Runyan, M. C., Shariff, J. A., Trangsrud, A., Tucker, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1851-3918, Tucker, R. S., Turner, A. D., Weber, A. C., Wiebe, D. V. and Young, E. Y. 2014. Design and construction of a carbon fiber gondola for the SPIDER balloon-borne telescope. Presented at: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2014, Montreal, Canada, 22-27 June 2014. Proceedings Volume 9145, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V. , vol.9145 SPIE, 91450T. 10.1117/12.2055413

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Abstract

We introduce the light-weight carbon fiber and aluminum gondola designed for the Spider balloon-borne telescope. Spider is designed to measure the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation with unprecedented sensitivity and control of systematics in search of the imprint of inflation: a period of exponential expansion in the early Universe. The requirements of this balloon-borne instrument put tight constrains on the mass budget of the payload. The Spider gondola is designed to house the experiment and guarantee its operational and structural integrity during its balloon-borne flight, while using less than 10% of the total mass of the payload. We present a construction method for the gondola based on carbon fiber reinforced polymer tubes with aluminum inserts and aluminum multi-tube joints. We describe the validation of the model through Finite Element Analysis and mechanical tests.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Publisher:	SPIE
Last Modified:	11 May 2023 13:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/156775

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