Likely to be launched in
December 2023 from Antarctica, ASTHROS will spend about three weeks drifting on
air currents above the icy southern continent.
NASA
has started work on a new mission to send a telescope, on a football
stadium-sized balloon, high into the stratosphere to observe wavelengths of
light invisible from the Earth. The mission will try to find answers about
formation of giant stars in the galaxy.
The telescope mission
called Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution
Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths (ASTHROS) is likely to be launched in
December 2023 from Antarctica. It will spend about three weeks drifting on air
currents above the icy southern continent, said the American space agency on
Wednesday.
Managed by NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, ASTHROS
will observe far-infrared light, or light with wavelengths much longer than
what is visible to the human eye at an altitude of about 130,000 feet (40 km)
roughly four times higher than commercial airliners fly. The balloon included a
telescope, science instruments, and subsystems such as the cooling and
electronic systems. Engineers at JPL will begin the integration and testing of
those subsystems in August.
In a statement, NASA said,
"Scientific Balloon Program has been operating for 30 years. It launches
10 to 15 missions a year from locations around the globe in support of
experiments across all of NASA's science disciplines, as well as for technology
development and education purposes. Balloon missions don't only have lower
costs compared to space missions, they also have shorter times between early
planning and deployment, which means they can accept the higher risks
associated with using new or state-of-the-art technologies that haven't yet
flown in space."
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