"Our mission is to design, launch and operate the world’s first constellation of up to four orbiting space-based optical telescopes, placing space exploration at the fingertips of everyone." -- Bjarni Tryggvason Retired Space Shuttle Astronaut and Co-Founder of Mission Space
Since 1990 the Hubble Space Telescope has become the most famous of the space-based observatories and has astonished the world with outstanding images of the cosmos. But this and other big budget observatories are restricted to a lucky few with either large budgets or whose projects are approved by committees.
OPEN TO EVERYONE
Mission Space plans to provide far greater access to space based observations through low access costs and an “open to everyone” user policy. The constellation of up to 4 orbiting telescopes will have a far more modest budget for their build, launch and operation. They will have highly capable optics, sensor and tracking technology making them a valuable tool for the astronomy community worldwide including:
- For Researchers
- For Educators
- For Amateurs
- For The General Public
Four telescopes, two in equatorial orbits and two in polar orbits, are planned. Anyone will be able to buy time on the scopes and download images to their smart phones or laptops.
A really good ground based telescope for amateurs might be an 8 inch reflector. Mission Space scopes will be 25 to 30 inches in mirror diameter providing an order of magnitude more light gathering power. On top of that is another factor of ten worth of clarity by being in space outside the atmosphere.
Here are some of the powerful features this system will have.
NOT LIMITED TO NIGHT TIME Uninterrupted viewing 24 hours per day compared to ground-based telescopes which are limited to cloud free darkness hours.
REDUCED POST-PROCESSING ISSUES Ground-based telescope images require substantial image processing.
NO MOONLIGHT SCATTER The telescopes are not subjected to atmospheric scattering of moonlight, which reduces the effectiveness of ground-based telescopes.
POINTING ACCURACY Using star trackers our telescopes can achieve very high resolution and precision of pointing accuracy, improving image resolution and imaging dynamic range.
NO ATMOSPHERIC DISTORTION The telescopes are not hampered by the atmospheric turbulence that significantly limits the sharpness of images obtained with ground based telescopes.
UV AND IR OBSERVING The Earth's atmosphere blocks much of the UV and IR limiting ground based viewing of this portion of the spectrum. Mission Space telescopes will not have this limit.
Sovereign Sky BEOS Connection
Sovereign Sky is partnering with Mission Space to use these four platforms as anchors for 4 to 16 nodes for the BEOS space based blockchain. They will interface to other purpose built nodes in the Sovereign Sky constellation. BEOS will provide nodes that execute smart contract transactions in the relative regulatory freedom of international space. BEOS tokens will be useful for buying time on the telescope platforms.
You can read about BEOS and Sovereign Sky here: Sovereign Sky launches BEOSNICK 1 Satellite.
Mission Space Co-Founders
I had the opportunity to interview Mission Space cofounder Angus McGlynn on Crypto Connie this week. You can watch it here...
BEOS the Blockchain and Telescopes in Space
Visit Mission Space Web Site to learn more
Oh yes, did I mention I get to lead development of the scope pointing and control software? Its an interesting optimization of pointing commands to maximize how many look requests we can service per hour. Very much like drone flight path autorouting, only in spherical coordinates.
DISCLAIMER: This article represents current thinking of the Mission Space team and is subject to change without notice. Nothing should be interpreted as a statement of fact or promise to do anything. It is released here for community discussion purposes only.
Posts in the Sovereign Sky Sci-Fi Series
All My Free Speech is Fiction Sovereign Sky Excerpt 1 - A Proliferation of Parallels Sovereign Sky Excerpt 2 - Specialization is for Insects Sovereign Sky Excerpt 3 - The Fall of Empire Sovereign Sky Excerpt 4 - Doc's Darwin Awards Sovereign Sky Excerpt 5 - Dystopian Universes Sovereign Sky Excerpt 6 - Jailbait Jeopardy Sovereign Sky Excerpt 7 - A New Hope Sovereign Sky Excerpt 8 - Brown v Howey Sovereign Sky Excerpt 9 - Temporal Engineering Sovereign Sky Excerpt 10 - Truth or Consequences
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stan Larimer is sci-fi author, evangelist and iconoclast specializing on Christian, Jeffersonian and BitShares topics. Check out all his posts at:
Stan's Steemit Blog Stan's Whaleshares Blog Blue Rock Talk with Connie Willis on YouTube BitShares for Nice People
