Development of a diagnostic coronagraph on the ISS: BITSE overview and progress report

The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) has been collaborating with the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, to install a coronagraph on the International Space Station (ISS). The coronagraph will utilize spectral information to simultaneously measure electron density, temperature, and velocity. As a first step, we developed a new coronagraph and launched it on a stratospheric balloon in 2019 (BITSE) from Fort Sumner, New Mexico in USA. As the next step, the coronagraph will be be further developed, installed and operate on the ISS (CODEX) in 2022 to address a number of important questions (e.g., source and acceleration of solar wind, and coronal heating) in the physics of the solar corona and the heliosphere. Recently, BITSE has been launched at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. In this presentation, we will introduce the BITSE mission and discuss recent progress.