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SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 28,889

Re: Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT) - Space Railway To Explore Planets, Stars,

New space telescope design:
If approved, SPIRIT could be ready for launch in 2014 and be stationed at the L2 libration point, one million miles from Earth.

Does it seem like we have a lot of telescopes in developement or is it just me?

NASA Studies Space Railway To Explore Planets, Stars, And Galaxies
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/telescopes-04zd.html

MarsDog

Member

From: vancouver canada

Registered: 2004-03-24

Posts: 852

Re: Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT) - Space Railway To Explore Planets, Stars,

40 meters for 100 improvement in resolution is a good start.
Proposed 40 meters is (40/3x10^8 = 1.3 E-7 light seconds long)

Put interferometer out by Pluto orbit (10 light hours long)
10 light hours is 36000 seconds
Larger by factor of 36000/1.3 E-7 = 2.7 E+11

If the proposed 40 meter can resolve a Jupiter sized planet.
The base line of 10 light hours will resolve:
Jupiter's diameter comparison = 1.42984 E+8 meters/2.7 E+11 = 0.53 E-3 meters.
At half a millimeter resolution we could get good portrait of the aliens.

Euler

Member

From: Corvallis, OR

Registered: 2003-02-06

Posts: 922

Re: Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT) - Space Railway To Explore Planets, Stars,

Does it seem like we have a lot of telescopes in developement or is it just me?

The telescopes that we are putting at SEL2 can't be serviced like Hubble was(unless we develop some new spacecraft), so they are only designed to last 5-10 years.  That means that you want to send up a new, better telescope every 5 years.  It looks like SPIRIT is designed to be the replacement for the James Webb Space telescope.

If the proposed 40 meter can resolve a Jupiter sized planet.
The base line of 10 light hours will resolve:
Jupiter's diameter comparison = 1.42984 E+8 meters/2.7 E+11 = 0.53 E-3 meters.
At half a millimeter resolution we could get good portrait of the aliens.

It might be able to achieve resolution that good, but unless the mirrors used were very large there would not be enough light gathering power to see the aliens.  The technical challenges of building an interferometer that large are also quite formidable, so I don't expect to see anything like that in the near future.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 28,889

Re: Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT) - Space Railway To Explore Planets, Stars,

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer the mission has been approved to proceed into the preliminary design phase as the next in NASA's Medium-class Explorer program of lower cost, highly focused, rapid-development scientific spacecraft. It is scheduled to launch in 2008. New space-based telescope will survey the cosmos with infrared detectors up to 500,000 times more sensitive than previous survey missions. It will reveal hundreds of cool, or failed, stars, called brown dwarfs, some of which may lie closer to us than any known stars.

Sounds of the former montra...

NASA Approves Mission to Seek Nearest Stars, Brightest Galaxies
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2004-252

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/telescopes-04ze.html

MarsDog

Member

From: vancouver canada

Registered: 2004-03-24

Posts: 852

Re: Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT) - Space Railway To Explore Planets, Stars,

http://www.launc.tased.edu.au/online/sc … y1.html]We peak at 9.3 um

Cosmic background peaks at http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskEx … 0.cfm]7.92 mm.

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/Hea … shtml]Peak frequency of cosmic background is 160.4 GHz.

There is still a lot of spectrum to be explored.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 28,889

Re: Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope (SPIRIT) - Space Railway To Explore Planets, Stars,

update as it appears on the abcnews site:
New Space Telescope Would Use a Technology Normally Limited to Earth Scientists Designing a 'Space Railroad'

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=179271&page=1