ISMAR — An Airborne Test Platform to demonstrate receiver (or other) technology: Latest developments and a description of the platform

ISMAR, the International SubMillimetre Airborne Radiometer, was built to be a research instrument for the Met Office, with a modular design to make it relatively easy to add or remove receiver components. This design also allows for any other suitably sized equipment to be fitted, instead of the Met Office receivers, and flown in a semi external environment. Instrumentation can view a range of external angles and two onboard thermal calibration targets. Provision for data logging is available as is power for equipment and heaters. The latest channels to be fitted to ISMAR will be 875GHz receivers, and there is a plan to demonstrate a single feedhorn dual polarised 424GHz receiver using ISMAR as an airborne testbed.