High Altitude Balloon Experiment

The mission of the High Altitude Balloon Experiment (HABE) is to resolve critical acquisition, tracking, and pointing (ATP) and fire control issues, validate enabling technologies, and acquire supporting data for future space-based lasers (SBL)experiments. HABE is integrating components from existing technologies into a payload that can autonomously acquire, track, and point a low power laser at a ballistic missile in its boost phase of flight. For its primary mission the payload will be flown multiple times to an altitude of 85,000 feet above the White Sands Missile Range ((WSMR). From the near-space environment of the balloon flight, HABE will demonstrate the ATP functions required for a space-based laser in a ballistic missile defense role. The HABE platform includes coarse and fine gimbal pointing, infrared and visible passive tracking, active fine tracking, internal auto-alignment and boresighting, and precision line-of-sight (LOS) stabilization functions. This paper presents an overview and status of the HABE program.