Taking The Lid Off Kepler

SPACE SCOPES

For the Medium resolution animation (25MB mov) please go here. For the Low resolution animation (7MB mov) please go here. Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Apr 08, 2009
This artist's animation illustrates how the dust cover on NASA's Kepler telescope will be ejected. Engineers will send a command up to the space telescope to pass an electrical current through a "burn wire."

The burn wire will break and a latch holding the cover closed will be released.

The spring-loaded cover will swing open on a fly-away hinge, before drifting away from the spacecraft and entering its own orbit around the sun. (Kepler is also orbiting the sun in what's called an Earth-trailing orbit.)

With the cover off, starlight will enter Kepler's science instrument, the photometer, and be imaged onto its focal plane.

Engineers will continue to calibrate the instrument using images of stars for another several weeks, after which science observations will begin.

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10 Million Euro For RadioNet FP7

Paris, France (SPX) Mar 27, 2009
The European radio astronomy program, RadioNet, has been awarded 10 Million Euro by the European Commission under the Seventh European Framework Program (FP7). RadioNet is an EC integrating activity that brings together all the major radio observatories in Europe, covering the frequency range of 10 Mhz to 1 Thz.

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