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Distant Planet Imaging Project Gets More Funding

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the dreaming-of-zoom-lenses dept.

It doesn't come easy writes "NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts has chosen a proposal by the University of Colorado (UC) at Boulder to image distant planets around other stars for a second round of funding. Known as the New Worlds Observer, the UC project is for an orbiting, soccer-field sized "starshade" shaped like a daisy that would funnel light from distant planets between its petals to a second spacecraft trailing 50,000 miles behind. If the concept proves feasible, it could 'identify planetary features like oceans, continents, polar caps and cloud banks, and even detect biomarkers like methane, water, oxygen and ozone [...]'"

6 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. CU not UC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    University of Colorado goes by CU.

    But cool project. It would be interesting to see what other worlds look like, not just know that they are there.

    1. Re:CU not UC by coyote-san · · Score: 2, Informative

      You beat me to it.

      For reference "UC" is California (UCLA for the LA campus, UCSD for the San Diego campus, you get the idea.)

      "UConn" is the University of Connecticut.

      "CU" is the University of Colorado, "DU" is the University of Denver.

      This sounds pendantic but searches for "UC" will bring up the wrong universities.

      --
      For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
  2. Re:Sounds cool... by CyricZ · · Score: 2, Informative

    What other shape do you propose? Remember, it must be able to funnel light.

    --
    Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
  3. More info by Zathrus · · Score: 2, Informative

    The NAIC website has a smidgen more info on it -- namely that there were four other research projects funded as well.

    There's a PDF on this project that may contain more info, but my copy of Acrobat (6.0) declines to render the entire thing (or the PDF is junk, dunno which).

    There's also an article on Astrobio.net that gives little more detail than the CU link... but it does have links to other sources that may be informative. Really though, this concept seems to be in such an infancy stage that "simple" questions like "so how do you turn it?" haven't been answered yet (in fact, in this NASA link how to keep the two craft in alignment is listed as a "main technological hurdle").

  4. Here by marcantonio · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not the best picture but you get the idea... http://www.physorg.com/news7177.html

  5. Re:How will the religious establishment react? by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ed Babinski wrote a good article on some of the problems presented with life on other worlds (start at "All kidding aside").

    The presence of even lifeless planets beyond earth was deeply troubling for early theologans, and the concept was widely denied for theological reasons. "Great lights" that light noone's sky. Tracts of land far greater than those on Earth, doing nothing, for noone - I.e., God creating in vain. If they did have life, they couldn't trace it back to adam, et al. Such a huge act of creation, and God didn't see if fit to put a word of it in the bible? There were all sorts of major problems, and it took a long time to get it accepted.

    --
    But this Rottweiler not only is snarling and frothing at the mouth; it also went to Harvard.