National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Goddard Space Flight Center

The WASP system, currently under development, is a NASA-provided support system that can point telescopes on balloon gondolas at inertial targets with arc-second accuracy.
WASP is intended to be a flexible system that can be used to support a variety of science-provided instruments and sensors to meet specific mission performance requirements.
Major components of WASP are reusable, which reduces the overall costs to the BPO and users.
WASP has successfully completed two test flights, in 2011 and 2012, and has demonstrated positional stability at sub-arc-second levels during flight.
In 2013, WASP supported its first pointed science instrument, the HyperSpectral Imager for Climate Science (HySICS).
The HySICS systems are provided by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), an institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU).
The WASP/HySICS gondola is scheduled to be launched from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, in September 2013.

WASP Flight Overview

For more information on WASP, Click Here.

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