Welcome to the home of AESOP-Lite! In this website you will find updates about our ongoing mission, as well as information about the instrument, the science behind the mission, and the first flight of 2018. Check out the Palestine, Texas (2022) blog to track the progress during the integration at the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility.
The upgraded AESOP-Lite II payload was launched from McMurdo Station, Antarctica on January 10th, 2024. Data is being analysed.
News! Our instrument paper was accepted for publication to Nuclear Instruments and Methods A:
“Design and performance of the balloon-borne magnetic spectrometer AESOP-Lite”, John Clem, Paul Evenson, Robert P. Johnson, Brian Lucas, Pierre-Simon Mangeard, Scott Martin, Sarah Mechbal, James Roth, NIMA-D-24-00688R1 (Preprint)
Abstract:
“The Anti-Electron Sub-Orbital Payload Low Energy (AESOP-Lite) is designed to determine the source of the negative spectral index of cosmic-ray electrons below 100 MeV through a series of balloon flights. The entry telescope from the classic LEE (Low Electron Energy) instrument was directly integrated into AESOP-Lite, which utilizes a gas-Cherenkov and magnetic-spectrometer configuration to identify the particle type and measure its energy. Its first flight took place May 15-21, 2018 from Kiruna, Sweden accumulating roughly 130 hours of exposure above 130,000 feet altitude before landing on Ellesmere Island, Canada. After recovery, work began to upgrade the instrument for its next flight, from McMurdo Station, Antarctica. In this paper, we report on its updated design, calibration and performance. This includes analyses of ground data taken during integration. The observed muon charge separation from ground runs is discussed and compared to the expected performance of the spectrometer, and the first test results of the new time-of-flight (TOF) system are presented. The energy resolution from track reconstruction algorithms and the energy-dependent geometry factor are tested with Monte Carlo simulations.”
The view from ~155kft above Antarctica!
The trajectory of the 2024 flight.
