It has a 2-meter primary mirror that directs light into bolometer arrays operating at 250, 350, and 500 μm.

These arrays were developed for the SPIRE instrument on the Herschel Space Observatory.

The third flight of BLAST in Antarctica was a scientific success, but much of telescope was destroyed after landing.

This most recent flight of BLAST (aka BLAST-Pol) has a polarimeter to observe the polarized light from star forming cores.

[2] Paul is the brother of cosmologist Mark Devlin, Principal Investigator of the BLAST project.