We are developing a balloon-borne hard X-ray telescope that utilizes grazing-incidence optics. Termed HERO, for High-Energy Replicated Optics, the instrument will provide unprecedented sensitivity in the hard X-ray region and will achieve millicrab-level sensitivity in a typical 3 hr balloon-flight observation and 50 μcrab sensitivity on ultralong-duration flights. A recent proof-of-concept flight, featuring a small number of mirror shells, captured the first focused hard X-ray images of galactic X-ray sources. Full details of the payload, its expected future performance, and its recent measurements are provided.
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