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No, that goes way too far. Radiation hardening and heat dissipation are really difficult problems that remain for any space telescopes. (I'm at the University
by spenczar5 3y ago
No, that goes way too far. Radiation hardening and heat dissipation are really difficult problems that remain for any space telescopes.
(I'm at the University of Washington Department of Astronomy, and work on telescope software).
- pfdietz 3y agoWith sufficiently cheap launch, you get radiation hardening with shielding. The goal is to use off the shelf hardware as much as you can. If things break, that's why we have servicing, just like on terrestrial telescopes.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoThe cost of rolling a truck to a terrestrial telescope is several orders of magnitude smaller than the cost of servicing a telescope in space. From that difference flows a greater emphasis on reliability for a space-based scope.
- dekhn 3y agoAh. So, I should have said this earlier: there's a whole different world of cubesats that are what you're looking for. We could almost certainly help the astro community by funding and launching large fleets of simple scopes that make observing time available to more researchers. You don't service cubesats, you just learn from your past mistakes and launch more.