Thread

A 12-year sequence of telescope images of a star and four planets orbiting

402 points · 82 comments · mariuz

ortusdux · 1790979604 · focus · HN ↗
I'm excited for the leap in this tech that the Nancy Grace Roman telescope's new chronograph promises.
<a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/the-roman-coronagraph-instrument/" rel="nofollow">https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/the-roman-coronagraph-inst...
The Roman Coronagraph is designed to detect planets 100 million times fainter than their stars, which is 100 to 1,000 times better than existing space-based coronagraphs. The Roman Coronagraph will be capable of directly imaging reflected starlight from a planet akin to Jupiter in size, temperature, and distance from its parent star.
1. izend · 1790980052 · focus · HN ↗
  I am as well and hopefully Starship allows even larger telescopes!
  1. lukeify · 1790981375 · focus · HN ↗
    Starship can do it.
    As long as the telescope can fit through the Starlink Pez dispenser.
    walrus01 · 1790988115 · focus · HN ↗
    If this remains a long term design limitation it'll be interesting to see if people design satellite hardware that consists of multiple individual rectangular slab sized things (generally same size/shape per piece as starlink v3 test satellites which have unfolding PV/antenna), that can latch together once dispensed, and further unfold.
    Such an architecture might not be an impossible design consideration if the goal is to have something big like the sun-shade/cold side of the Webb telescope.
    dylan604 · 1790989013 · focus · HN ↗
    I can't imagine that there will not be other versions. The Pez dispenser is just solving the problem at hand. Eventually, I wouldn't be surprised to see cargo bay doors similar to the shuttle's.
    walrus01 · 1790994879 · focus · HN ↗
    That seems likely. Best guess is the relatively small slot sized door is a cautious design while they're working out issues with re-entry heating and stresses and sacrificing ships into the ocean. Once they're very confident they have the configuration for the 'hot' side of the starship working well on re-entry (and probably after they've returned and caught a few), it could be expanded in size.
    NitpickLawyer · 1791003804 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, they'll have more versions for sure. There are two main designs that have been discussed / shown before (one where the entire nose hinges "backwards" and exposes the payload, and one that looks like the shuttle bay doors). And I think that for NASA decadal projects (i.e. JWST-like big telescopes) they could even go with a non-reusable Starship, with "regular" fairings that get dropped.

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