BFORE: The B-mode Foreground Experiment

Understand

The B-mode Foreground Experiment (BFORE) is a proposed NASA balloon project designed to make optimal use of the sub-orbital platform by concentrating on three dust foreground bands (270, 350, and 600 GHz) that complement ground-based cosmic microwave background (CMB) programs.

• BFORE will survey ~1/4 of the sky with 1.7 - 3.7 arcminute resolution, enabling precise characterization of the Galactic dust that now limits constraints on inflation from CMB B-mode polarization measurements.
• In addition, BFORE's combination of frequency coverage, large survey area, and angular resolution enables science far beyond the critical goal of measuring foregrounds.
• BFORE will constrain the velocities of thousands of galaxy clusters, provide a new window on the cosmic infrared background, and probe magnetic fields in the interstellar medium.