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We will spend the first half of the IRAD performance period designing the new OPIS infrastructure, and the second half procuring and assembling the mechanical architecture. The design process will be conducted in consultation with the WASP team (the WASP Program Manager, David Stuchlik at WFF, is a collaborator on this proposal) in order to avoid any mismatch between the OPIS design and the WASP gimbal and gondola design. The overall schedule will be organized with the goal of producing a working telescope structure that can immediately be integrated into a new WASP design after the flight season ends in October 2015.
The improvement in collecting area and efficiency for OPIS will provide a substantial benefit for future missions. We have leveraged the existing OPIS design and development for two separate 2014 ROSES proposals for follow-up balloon missions: the Transiting Exoplanet Explorer Balloon (TEEBall; P.I. Mandell) and the Eruptive Processes EXplorer (EPEX; P.I. Hurford). However, both of these mission proposals rely on time-resolved spectroscopy of variable phenomena (transiting exoplanets and Jovian lunar outgassing, respectively). The precision for each measurement and the targets available are therefore fundamentally limited by the collecting area of the telescope.
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