Spider

Spider is a balloon-borne experiment designed to search for primordial gravitational waves imprinted on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Measuring the strength of this signal puts limits on inflationary theory. The Spider instrument consists of six half degree-resolution telescopes cooled to liquid Helium temperature (4 K) which observe at frequencies of 100 GHz, 150 GHz, and 280 GHz (corresponding to wavelengths of 3 mm, 2 mm, and 1.1 mm). Each telescope is coupled to a polarisation-sensitive transition-edge bolometer (TES) array cooled to 300 mK. Spider was the first instrument to successfully demonstrate time-domain multiplexed TES detectors in a space-like environment. At the time of the first flight over Antarctica in 2015, Spider was the most sensitive microwave instrument ever made. The primary science goals include: characterization of the curl-free component of the CMB polarization on the largest scales searching for the signature of inflationary gravitational waves in the CMB polarization characterization of the polarization properties of the emission from our own Milky Way Galaxy The first balloon flight of the experiment launched on January 1, 2015 at 16:59 local time (03:59 GMT) from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, with support from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. This Long Duration Balloon flight lasted for about 17 days, mapping about 10% of

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