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Re: There would be no reason to do that. In general, probably; BUT I'd qualify that to say it depends on the mission. As I mentioned nearby, visiting the bigge

by tabtab 8y ago

Re: There would be no reason to do that. In general, probably; BUT I'd qualify that to say it depends on the mission. As I mentioned nearby, visiting the bigger known Kuiper objects seems a bigger priority than finding new smaller ones (and finding them is better done near Earth). However, if something unusual were found at Thule such that a mission to study lots of smaller Kuiper objects were deemed warranted (like being made of gold or clear signs of life), then a probe with a relatively big telescope could be sent into the Kuiper Belt to hunt such objects in its approximate vicinity. That may still be cheaper than building larger-than-Hubble scopes near Earth to guide New-Horizons-like probes. But the math on that may depend how sparse smaller Kuiper objects are.

dogma1138 8y ago
That probe would be worse than a Hubble like telescope at an earth or near SOL orbit. Firstly due to their relative small size their angular size wouldn’t make much difference at those distances. Secondly you essentially limiting your search envelope to a small section of the belt as most of it would be further away form the telescope in the belt than from earth. And lastly you can launch a much bigger telescope to a near earth orbit than to the belt and you can also get the data much more rapidly so you can actually search for candidates in hours not in months and readjust the telescope as you see fit.
- peo939 8y ago
  Is there any reason to think of an array of telescopes, like the VLA? Like, multiple smaller telescopes scattered at large distances? Or is that too difficult to coordinate?
  - lmilcin 8y ago
    This has a lot of sense and shouldn't be too difficult to coordinate. This has already been tested by LISA Pathfinder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISA_Pathfinder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISA_Pathfinder) and proven to be feasible. Still, the reson here to get something far away from Earth as a general is not to have closer observation point but to have large distance between array nodes.

by tabtab 8y ago

dogma1138 8y ago

That probe would be worse than a Hubble like telescope at an earth or near SOL orbit. Firstly due to their relative small size their angular size wouldn’t make much difference at those distances. Secondly you essentially limiting your search envelope to a small section of the belt as most of it would be further away form the telescope in the belt than from earth. And lastly you can launch a much bigger telescope to a near earth orbit than to the belt and you can also get the data much more rapidly so you can actually search for candidates in hours not in months and readjust the telescope as you see fit.

peo939 8y ago
Is there any reason to think of an array of telescopes, like the VLA? Like, multiple smaller telescopes scattered at large distances? Or is that too difficult to coordinate?
- lmilcin 8y ago
  This has a lot of sense and shouldn't be too difficult to coordinate. This has already been tested by LISA Pathfinder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISA_Pathfinder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISA_Pathfinder) and proven to be feasible. Still, the reson here to get something far away from Earth as a general is not to have closer observation point but to have large distance between array nodes.