Status, Flight Preparation, and Future Instrument Opportunities of the STUDIO Balloon-Borne Telescope Platform

The Stratospheric UV Demonstrator of an Imaging Observatory (STUDIO) is a balloon-borne platform designed and built to carry different astronomical instruments or telescopes. It thereby offers an accessible and affordable platform for observations in atmosphere-constrained wavelength ranges. In its current setup, it houses an imaging micro-channel plate (MCP) detector on a 0.5 m aperture telescope. The first flight of this setup is planned during the summer turnaround conditions over Esrange, Sweden, in the 2023 or 2024 season. This mission will act as a demonstrator and technical test for the versatile and scalable astronomical platform as well as for the aforementioned MCP instrument. If successful, it will furthermore allow first scientific studies of variable hot compact stars and flaring M-dwarf stars within the galactic plane. In this paper, we present the design and current status of testing of the STUDIO platform, particularly including environmental tests of the optical elements, on-sky tests of the gondola attitude control system, and simulation results of the image stabilization system. We furthermore describe the planned system tests as part of the flight preparation. As an outlook, we present details on how the platform can be used to fly different instruments or telescopes, including potential flight routes and science opportunities.