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Last of the Great Observatories to Launch
jqpublic writes "The last in NASA's
Great Observatory Program, the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), is set to launch in the
wee hours on Monday. The launch can viewed live on NASA's Countdown web site. Interestingly, SIRTF will not be in Earth orbit, but will drift away from Earth by about 15 million kilometers per year. This allows the telescope to cool to very low temperatures (30K), which reduces dramatically the amount of cryogens it needs to carry."
The SIRTF Science Center had a contest to name SIRTF. They'll be announcing the name in a few months.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
It sure took them long enough to launch *half* of the GO-IR-telescope. The original Great Observatories IR telescope was redesigned several years ago into two less expensive versions, one in shuttle serviceable orbit, one in far earth orbit. The serviceable one was cancelled, and the other one was redesigned to become the current SIRTF
There's a problem with NASA currently though, they ditched Compton, compromising the promise of the Great Observatories series. Without the Gamma Ray Observatory, they can't target an astronomical phenomenon with the full spectrum that was available before. But C-GRO was designed to be shuttle serviceable just like HST... instead of getting rid of it, they could have just replaced its failing gyros (like they've done on HST), so we could have a more complete picture of the universe.
The current design seems to be rather lack lustre, in making the telescope only accessible to an annulus of space... rotating solar panels would solve the problem (with rotating radiators)
HST, CGRO, CXRT, SIRTF...
JWST, ???, ???, ???
Is HST the only Great Observatory being replaced?