The payload of the Faint Intergalactic Redshifted Emission Balloon (FIREBall-2), the second generation of the FIREBall instrument (PI: C. Martin, Caltech), has been calibrated and launched from the NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. FIREBall-2 was launched for the first time on the September 22, 2018, and the payload performed the very first multi-object acquisition from space using a multi-object spectrograph. Our performance-oriented paper presents the calibration and last ground adjustments of FIREBall-2, the in-flight performance assessed based on the flight data, and the predicted instrument’s ultimate sensitivity. This analysis predicts that future flights of FIREBall-2 should be able to detect the HI Lyα resonance line in galaxies at z ∼ 0.67, but will find it challenging to spatially resolve the circumgalactic medium.

中文翻译：

---

FIREBall-2仪器的端到端地面校准和飞行中性能

第二代FIREBall仪器（PI：C。Martin，加州理工学院）的微弱星际红移发射气球（FIREBall-2）的有效载荷已经从新墨西哥州萨姆纳堡的NASA哥伦比亚科学气球设施进行了校准和发射。FIREBall-2于2018年9月22日首次发射，有效载荷使用多对象光谱仪进行了太空中的首次多对象采集。我们以性能为导向的论文介绍了FIREBall-2的校准和最后地面调整，基于飞行数据评估的飞行中性能以及预测仪器的极限灵敏度。该分析预测，FIREBall-2的未来飞行应该能够在z〜0.67处检测到星系中的HILyα共振线，