The Balloon-borne Investigation of Temperature and Speed of Electrons in the corona (BITSE) mission, performed by KASI and NASA, used a high-altitude scientific balloon. The purpose of BITSE was to investigate the scientific feasibility of electron temperature and velocity measurements in the solar corona using wavelength-dependent polarization brightness differences. KASI was responsible for developing the command and data handling (C&DH) system, including the main electronics unit and flight software (FSW). Here, we introduce the development of C&DH system of BITSE and describe the ground integration and test and flight operations. The main electronics unit was built using an industrial-grade modular system in customized enclosures that withstood the operating environment. The FSW was developed using the core Flight System (cFS), an open-source software framework developed by NASA and used in several successful space missions. BITSE was launched at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, USA, on September 18, 2019. It observed the solar corona for approximately 4 hours at an altitude of approximately 40 km and collected 16,000 solar corona images. This study could provide guidelines for developing the C&DH system for future balloon missions.

The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) has been developing a next-generation coronagraph (NGC) in cooperation with NASA to measure the coronal electron density, temperature, and speed simultaneously, using four different optical filters around 400 nm. KASI organized an expedition to demonstrate the coronagraph measurement scheme and the instrumental technology during the 2017 total solar eclipse (TSE) across the USA. The observation site was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA. We built an eclipse observation system, the Diagnostic Coronal Experiment (DICE), composed of two identical telescopes to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. The observation was conducted at four wavelengths and three linear polarization directions in the limited total eclipse time of about 140 seconds. We successfully obtained polarization data for the corona but we were not able to obtain information on the coronal electron temperature and speed due to the low signal-to-noise ratio of the optical system and strong emission from prominences located at the western limb. In this study, we report the development of DICE and the observation results from the eclipse expedition. TSE observation and analysis with our self-developed instrument showed that a coronagraph needs to be designed carefully to achieve its scientific purpose. We gained valuable experience for future follow-up NASA-KASI joint missions: the Balloon-borne Investigation of the Temperature and Speed of Electrons in the Corona (BITSE) and the COronal Diagnostic EXperiment (CODEX).

In a solar coronagraph, the most important component is an occulter to block the direct light from the disk of the sun. Because the intensity of the solar outer corona is 10−6 to 10−10 times of that of the solar disk (I⊙), it is necessary to minimize scattering at the optical elements and diffraction at the occulter. Using a Fourier optic simulation and a stray light test, we investigated the performance of a compact coronagraph that uses an external truncated-cone occulter without an internal occulter and Lyot stop. In the simulation, the diffracted light was minimized to the order of 7.6 × 10−10 I⊙ when the cone angle c was about 0.39◦. The performance of the cone occulter was then tested by experiment. The level of the diffracted light reached the order of 6 × 10−9 I⊙ at c = 0.40◦. This is sufficient to observe the outer corona without additional optical elements such as a Lyot stop or inner occulter. We also found the manufacturing tolerance of the cone angle to be 0.05◦, the lateral alignment tolerance was 45 μm, and the angular alignment tolerance was 0.043◦. Our results suggest that the physical size of coronagraphs can be shortened significantly by using a cone occulter.