INSTEAD OF BUILDING SINGLE MONSTER SCOPES LIKE JAMES WEBB, WHAT ABOUT SWARMS OF SPACE TELESCOPES WOR

[Judi Lynn]

INSTEAD OF BUILDING SINGLE MONSTER SCOPES LIKE JAMES WEBB, WHAT ABOUT SWARMS OF SPACE TELESCOPES WORKING TOGETHER?
Article written: 8 Jul , 2018
by Matt Williams

In the coming decade, a number of next-generation instruments will take to space and begin observing the Universe. These will include the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is likely to be followed by concepts like the Large Ultraviolet/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR), the Origins Space Telescope (OST), the Habitable Exoplanet Imager (HabEx) and the Lynx X-ray Surveyor.

These missions will look farther into the cosmos than ever before and help astronomers address questions like how the Universe evolved and if there is life in other star systems. Unfortunately, all these missions have two things in common: in addition to being very large and complex, they are also very expensive. Hence why some scientists are proposing that we rely on more cost-effective ideas like swarm telescopes.

Two such scientists are Jayce Dowell and Gregory B. Taylor, a research assistant professor and professor (respectively) with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of New Mexico. Together, the pair outlined their idea in a study titled “The Swarm Telescope Concept“, which recently appeared online and was accepted for publication by the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation.

As they state in their study, traditional astronomy has focused on the construction, maintenance and operation of single telescopes. The one exception to this is radio astronomy, where facilities have been spread over an extensive geographic area in order to obtain high angular resolution. Examples of this include the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), and the proposed Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

More:
https://www.universetoday.com/139566/instead-of-building-single-monster-scopes-like-james-webb-what-about-swarms-of-space-telescopes-working-together/

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Optical arrays certainly have place, and large ground-based scopes are often segmented, but...

dealing with overall costs, segment management and servicing, actual light-collecting, and a few other things (not the least of which is the ability to get funding for a project) are still questionable.

I know a couple of optics engineers at Brookhaven Lab and next time I see them I'll mention it (hope I remember).

[Bearware]

2. When will we send parts and tele-robots into orbit so we can build telescopes in micro-gravity.

I know SpaceX's BFR should be able to launch a fully assembled telescope 9 meters in diameter. I don't know how much it costs to build a telescope on earth that is strong enough to survive a launch but it's a bundle and takes years to design. If we build telescopes in orbit, we are no longer constrained by the launch weight, strength and dimension limits for a single launch vehicle - including one as large as BFR.

If you were to send a substantial quantity of liquid mercury (or other suitable material) to orbit with the other things needed to handle it, you could make an enormous high-quality and ultra-light weight optical mirror. In the microgravity, if the mercury were kept at a temperature to keep it a liquid, put in a mold, spun and also accelerated at precise rates in a direction perpendicular to the spin, it would produce a parabolic surface that would be close to optically perfect. I don't know what the diameter limiting factors would be but it would seem a 100 diameter mirror or much larger could be in reached.

Once a working model is produced, more could be made with little more than loading up raw materials in 1-to several rockets, launching them and using the already orbiting tele-robots and assembly jigs to put more telescopes together. No more spending many years and billions of dollars custom designing each launch-able orbital telescope let alone spending billions on new optical telescopes on earth. Once we are doing this routinely in orbit we could easily refuel/repair the scopes in operation so they would have lifetimes in many decades or more. An optical telescope of this size could probably produce more and higher quality data in a relatively short time than all existing optical telescopes put together. Other types of telescopes can also benefit from the manufacturing advantages available in space as can the electronics they require.

In time, most of the heavy raw materials are likely to come from asteroids or the moon so they would be very inexpensive to produce once the industrial capacity to produce the first one is demonstrated.

I am sure I am not the first to think of this. Having watched SpaceX create large reusable rockets, I hope someone starts doing this kind of thing soon.