When what? drifting into space, it is usually done and dusted. However, a private company is saying not so fast about man-made objects in space. It plans to revive the legendary space telescope more than two astronomical units from Earth, or 185,911,614.
You’ve Probably Never Heard Of Infrared Rays Spitzer Space Telescope, but you may have heard of some of the amazing discoveries it has helped make over its 16-year lifespan; Exoplanets are likely to contain Earth-sized water, planet-forming scenes, and beautiful nebulae that give birth to new stars. NASA only planned to use the Spitzer for 5 years, but all of its instruments worked for 7 years before running out of liquid hydrogen as a coolant. However, Spitzer continued to send back limited data for another 9 years before overheating problems caused NASA to say goodbye to Spitzer in January 2020. Currently, it is drifting in orbit around the Sun. .
But those science geeks might have a chance to revive Spitzer. Rhea . Space Operations, a private space company (what a world) is working with some big names to bring the telescope back online. They call the mission Spitzer Resurrector. From Ars technique:
The plan is bold, but it has some serious backers, including the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Blue Sun Enterprises and Lockheed Martin.
“When it comes to robotic space service, this will be the most ambitious thing ever,” said Shawn Usman, astrophysicist, founder and CEO of Rhea Space Activity. “I mean, it actually sends a satellite to the other side of the Sun to revive the Last Great Observatory. So I think it’s going to be pretty ambitious, but it would be really cool if we can do it.”
Usman said the “Spitzer Resurrector” mission will be a small spacecraft that can fit in a 1 meter by 1 meter box and be ready to launch in 2026. After that, it will take about three years to reach the telescope. , during which the spacecraft will make observations of solar flare.
Howard Smith, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, run by Harvard and Smithsonian Universities, who took part in the proposed rescue flight, said: “We plan to stay busy from the very beginning. at the beginning of the mission.
When the resurrected spacecraft reaches the telescope, it will fly around at a distance of 50 to 100 km to describe Spitzer’s health. It will then attempt to establish contact with the telescope and begin relaying information back and forth between the ground and the telescope. This will allow scientists to restart observations.
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Rhea is a small company, with fewer than 10 employees, but it is seeking the entire $350 million grant for the mission from the U.S. Space Force. It would take the resurrector three years to even reach the Spitzer, so we may not make contact with the telescope before the end of the decade. And when we do get there, there is no guarantee the Spitzer will be in proper working order. Still, there’s a lot of smart people buying into this mission, with NASA reportedly ready to sign off on the rescue attempt.
