Free Spy telescope come to NASA with a Cost

The astronomers have been licking their lips ever since it was revealed that a US spy agency would be bequeathing NASA with two telescopes as good as the Hubble space telescope.  The mission “WFIRST” that would seek a better handle on dark energy which is speeding up the expansion of the Universe got a chance to resurrect. The 2.4 metre-wide telescopes have a field of view much wider than Hubble’s and would be better suited to the survey approach called for in WFIRST. “It is a tremendous opportunity”, says David Spergel an astronomer at Princeton University in New Jersey.

The telescopes each valued by NASA at around $250 million might actually make a WFIRST mission more expensive. As it stands right now, NASA would not be able to launch WFIRST until 2024. Moore the deputy director for astrophysics says that, with an infusion of money to re-purpose one of the spy telescopes, WFIRST launch could happen as early as 2020.

WFIRST was designed around 2.4 metre mirror and the mission can peer deeper into the Universe. It can survey the sky much more quickly. It can capture the attention of exoplanet hunters. Some are already calling for a star blocker to be added to the guts of the telescope so that the faint light of planets might be seen.

WFIRST was estimated to cost $1.6 billion. Reconfiguring the mission for a larger 2.4 metre telescope will come with added expenses. The spy telescope contains only the mirrors, optics and other structural supports. They lack solar panels, instruments and electronics. A heavier telescope would also require more expensive rocket to lift it into orbit. “I think we need a serious evaluation of the cost” says Spergel

Keywords – WFIRST, spy telescope, NASA, mission, expensive rocket.

NuSTAR to launch in June 13

NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array or NuSTAR is being prepared for the final journey to its launch pad on Kwajalein Atoll in the Central Pacific Ocean. It is scheduled to launch no earlier than June 13. The mission will study everything from massive black holes to our own sun.

“We will see the hottest, densest and most energetic objects with a fundamentally new high-energy X-ray telescope that can obtain much deeper and crisper images than before” said Fiona Harrison.

After taking off on launch day the Stargazer will drop the rocket around 8.30 am PDT (11.30 am EDT). The rocket will then ignite and carry NuSTAR to a low orbit around Earth.

“We’re all really excited to see the fruition of our work begin its mission in space” said Yunjin Kim, the project manager for the mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena Calif.

NuSTAR will be the first space telescope to create focused images of cosmic X-rays with the highest energies. The telescope will have more than 10 times the resolution and more than 100 times the sensitivity of its predecessors while operating in a similar energy range.

The mission will work with other telescopes in space and provides a more complete picture of the most energetic and exotic objects in space such as black holes, dead stars and jets traveling near the speed of the light.

The result of these modest investments is a small space telescope that will provide world-class science in an important but relatively unexplored band of the electromagnetic spectrum.

NuSTAR will study black holes that are big and small, far and near, answering questions about the formation and physics behind these wonders of the cosmos. The observatory will investigate how exploding stars forge the elements that make up the planets and will even study our own sun’s atmosphere.

The mission’s outreach program is based at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, Calif.

Keywords – Rohnert Park, Sonoma State University, NuSTAR, mission, launch pad.