3 ms·

wasn't there an experiment that used laser interferometry to calculate the precise distances between a constellation of three satellites? I assume something lik

• petschge 7y ago
  That was the LISA Pathfinder mission (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISA_Pathfinder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISA_Pathfinder), the preparatory step for a gravitational wave detector in space. And yes something like that could work eventually. Right now we are doing science on that concept. It takes a decade or three to get the technology mature enough that you can do astronomy with it.
  • toomuchtodo 7y ago
    In some StarLink thread on /r/spacex, someone was mentioning that you can't do IR/optical light interferometry without being able to measure the phase of light, and someone else said we're pretty close to being able to. If you're able to deploy orbital observatories with a StarLink sort of cadence (keep throwing up cheap satellites as quickly as possible), would you think we'd reach more mature observation tech faster? Maybe observing from Earth is dead long term if you drive innovation up and costs down with the observing systems and the supporting data transport networks. TLDR How do we make decades of progress in years instead?
    • petschge 7y ago
      Being able to iterate rapidly might be helpful to get tech of the ground into space once we have it. But right now even Earth-bound optical interferometry is in its infancy compared to optical astronomy and radio interferometry. It is an interesting subject of research for method development, but we are far away from an instrument that is sufficiently well understood to be useful.