robot might bring together modular telescope -- in space

The automatically assembled modular area telescope (RAMST) design is defined via Nicolas Lee and his colleagues at the California Institute of technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in an article published this week by SPIE, the global society for optics and photonics, in the magazine of Astronomical Telescopes, units, and systems (JATIS).

floor-primarily based telescopes are restrained by using atmospheric consequences and by their constant place on the earth.

space-primarily based telescopes do no longer have the ones risks but have other limits, which includes usual release vehicle volume and mass capacity.

layout of a modular area telescope that overcomes restrictions on extent and mass may want to allow telescope additives to be released incrementally, enabling the layout and deployment of extremely large area telescopes.

The layout special by using Lee and his colleagues in "architecture for in-area robotic meeting of a modular space telescope," focuses by and large on a robot device to perform obligations wherein astronaut fatigue would be a hassle.

"Our aim is to address the foremost technical demanding situations related to such an structure, so that destiny idea research addressing a selected science driver can bear in mind automatically assembled telescopes in their alternate space," the authors wrote.

the primary capabilities of the authors' proposed structure include a replicate built with a modular shape, a robot to position the telescope collectively and provide ongoing servicing, and superior metrology technologies to support the assembly and operation of the telescope.

An optionally available feature is the ability potential to fly the unassembled additives of the telescope in formation. The gadget structure is scalable to a ramification of telescope sizes and might not be no longer restricted to precise optical designs.

"The capability to collect a modular space telescope has different capacity packages," said Harley Thronson, senior scientist for superior Astrophysics ideas at NASA's Goddard area Flight center. "for example, astronomers using foremost ground-based telescopes are conversant in many a long time of operation, and the Hubble space Telescope has established that this is possible in space if astronauts are available. A robot gadget of assembly, improve, repair, and resupply offers the possibility of very lengthy useful lifetimes of space telescopes of a wide variety."

Thronson is a visitor editor for the unique segment on A destiny big-Aperture Ultraviolet/Optical/Infrared area Observatory in which the brand new studies seems.

Co-authors with Lee are Sergio Pellegrino, Kristina Hogstrom, and Joel Burdick of the California Institute of technology; and Paul Backes, Christine Fuller, Brett Kennedy, Junggon Kim, Rudranarayan Mukherjee, Carl Seubert, and Yen-Hung Wu of the Jet Propulsion Lab.