Paper: astro-ph/0606383
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 19:38:51 GMT (730kb)

Title: A High-Altitude, Station-Keeping Astronomical Platform

Authors: Robert A. Fesen (Department of Physics & Astronomy, Dartmouth College)

Comments: 11 pages, 10 figures. To appear in Proc. SPIE 6267, "Ground-based and
Airborne Telescopes", 2006 May 24-31, Orlando, Florida USA (6267-15)
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Several commercial telecommunication ventures together with a well funded US
military program make it a likely possibility that an autonomous,
high-altitude, light-than-air (LTA) vehicle which could maneuver and
station-keep for weeks to many months will be a reality in a few years. Here I
outline how this technology could be used to develop a high-altitude
astronomical observing platform which could return high-resolution optical data
rivaling those from space-based platforms but at a fraction of the cost.

\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0606383 , 730kb)