There has been a lot of attention paid to the final shuttle mission and even the Dawn spacecraft going into orbit around the asteroid Vesta. Lost in all this is a pretty cool Russian led mission called Radio Astron. The final piece of this puzzle is now in place with the launch of the Spektr-R satellite last night.Spektr-R is a pretty impressive piece of engineering. This satellite is a radio telescope that will unfold in space to a diameter of 10 meters (over 30 feet). It's been launched into a very elliptical orbit that will range from about 10,000km from the Earth to 390,000 km from the Earth, a little farther from Earth than the Moon (and the Moon's gravity will slowly change its orbit over time!)
Okay, so we have a 10 meter radio dish orbiting the Earth. We have much larger radio dishes on Earth, so what' the big deal? Spektr-R will be used in conjunction with radio telescopes on Earth. By combining its observations with those made by radio telescopes on Earth, it can obtain the resolution equivalent to that of a single dish up to 390,000km across! That translates into a resolution over 1,000 times better than Hubble (but in the radio part of the spectrum). You can find a whole list of the ground based facilities it will work with here, including my beloved Green Bank Telescope.
This high resolution will enable us to really zoom in on the active regions surrounding black holes at the centers of galaxies, probably one of the most exciting problems this project will tackle.
This project has been a long time coming. It was first proposed over 30 years ago and been mired in technical, political and funding difficulties. It survived the breakup of the Soviet Union. I spent a summer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank in 2003 and they had posters up highlighting their participation in this upcoming mission. Great to see it launched. I look forward to a successful check out for them and the first science observations later this year!
Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.
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4 comments:
Does that thing get HBO?
^ :-D
This is good. The more we learn about our universe, the more likely we will overcome our problems.
I am saddened that we've stopped the shuttle missions without a direct project to replace U.S. led manned flight. I'm glad to know we continue to work on other missions and tasks to further our knowledge about what is up there.
Looks like now we've gone stereo! Can you imagine if we figured out the mystery of black holes? Could it happen in our lifetime?
Say what you want,but I think the Chinese will be the ones to utilize space. Small means everything. Less air needed,less space, smaller vehicles, etc.
The problem with the shuttles is that Tech marched forward and they were 70s tech. We now know that space is an unforgiving and harsh environment. Cosmic rays, gamma radiation will slowly cook a person. It isn't just vacuum. Heck, you can build for vacuum. It's the radiation. Shielding needs to be thick and thick is heavy. Getting further from the sun isn't the answer either. Cosmic radiation is, well... cosmic. All around. The Earth's magnetic field keeps us safe.
A possible fix might be finally perfecting high temperature super conductors. These would create a high intensity magnetic field as a barrier. Living quarters would probably be spherical. To fit it all, the one requirement if we are to send more than robots out into the beyond, we'll need small of stature Astronauts. My own thoughts are that America squandered it's chance and the Chinese will pick up the pieces. They think long term and have a philosophy of the individual sacrificing for the whole.
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