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Boulder - Feb 25, 2002 The SIRTF telescope, the fourth and last of NASA's Great Observatories, was shipped last week from Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. to Lockheed Martin, Sunnyvale, Calif., for integration with the spacecraft. The Cryogenic Telescope Assembly and two of the Great Observatory's three science instruments, the Infrared Spectrograph and the Multiband Imaging Photometer, were built by Ball Aerospace for the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF). The innovative Cryogenic Telescope Assembly cooling system provides the low temperature of 1.8 degrees above absolute zero (-456 degrees Fahrenheit) required for sensitive observations by the three instruments. SIRTF will observe objects from the outer solar system to the most luminous known galaxies in the farthest reaches of space. It consists of a 0.85-meter telescope and three instruments capable of performing imaging, photometry, and spectroscopy in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. By studying the infrared thermal energy emitted by distant objects in the universe, astronomers gain significant knowledge of how the universe was formed and how it is changing. SIRTF provides a significant improvement over previous space infrared telescopes, which include the Infrared Astronomy Satellite built by Ball Aerospace in 1983. SIRTF's lifetime requirement is two-and-a-half years, with a goal of five-plus years that current estimates show should be achieved. It is slated for launch from Cape Canaveral in January 2003 as part of NASA's Origins Program, which seeks to answer the question: Where do we come from and are we alone? SIRTF follows NASA's other three Great Observatories: the Hubble Space Telescope, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Ball Aerospace has had a significant role in all four Great Observatories. Related Links SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express
Boom Time Begins For Cluster
Paris - September 11, 2000The Cluster mission will be booming over the next six weeks. During a carefully planned series of operations, 16 wire booms, each almost 50 metres in length, will gradually be released from the spinning satellites. Once they are fully deployed and begin to sweep out a giant circle around the spacecraft, these booms will provide a flood of data for the five wave experiments on each Cluster satellite.
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