Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NASA Considers Sending Telescope To the Outer Solar System

Posted by Unknown on from the research-base-on-ganymede dept.

Nancy_A writes "A mission that astronomers and cosmologists have only dreamed about — until now. A team at JPL and Caltech has been looking into the possibility of hitching an optical telescope to a survey spacecraft on a mission to the outer solar system. Light pollution in our inner solar system, from both the nearby glow of the Sun and the hazy zodiacal glow from dust ground up in the asteroid belt, has long stymied cosmologists looking for a clearer take on the early Universe."

1 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Earth's orbit and slingshots by captainpanic · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why couldn't they just send one upwards out of the plane of the solar system? Wouldn't that be quicker?

    Costs. And time.

    We already have a certain velocity in the plane (earth is going around the sun, and we have to escape the sun's gravity well). We have practically zero velocity in the upwards direction. This is also who rockets are launched from near the equator.

    Add to that possible slingshots around other planets, and you have your whole answer.