Wednesdays are for rocket history, but this next story involves not a satellite or even a sounding rocket. In a sense, it’s yet another story of scientists coming up with unique solutions to observations that could only be done by That Telescope. Speaking of That Telescope, the first science images from JWST are expected to be publicly released on July 12, and we’ll be here covering that release live on twitch.tv/cosmoquestx.

So what do you do if you need infrared observations but with something bigger than a sounding rocket and the telescope which has been delayed for 20 years still hasn’t got to it? You build a telescope for a stratospheric balloon, like the team on the Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths (ASTHROS) have done. Naturally, there are some constraints with this approach.

JWST has its mirror segments mounted on movable struts for ease of alignment and the ability to adjust it on the fly in the event of any problems – including such problems as being hit by a micrometeoroid. Of course, this design is not possible with an atmospheric balloon. For ASTHROS, each of the 2.5-meter mirror’s nine segments needs to be aligned on the ground. And the balloon can only lift so much, so the telescope’s support structure must be as light as possible while still very rigid to keep the mirrors aligned. By the way, that 2.5-meter mirror? It’s one of the largest telescopes ever put on an atmospheric balloon.

NASA missions are well known for using innovative techniques, but this telescope was made by an established company, Media Lario. This company made the primary mirror segments for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array’s telescopes, so they have experience making infrared telescopes.

What is new is the support structure, and this is where the innovation comes in. Media Lario worked with other Italian companies that made high-performance racing sailboats out of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber provided the lightweight but high-strength material that the team needed for the ASTHROS telescope.

So what will ASTHROS, with its large mirror and racing sailboat structure, actually be used for? How galaxies die. That sounds dramatic, but it’s pretty simple. As a galaxy evolves, the gas and dust that are usually pulled together to form new stars are blasted apart so that new stars eventually stop forming. This process is called stellar feedback because it is caused by the already established stars when they eject mass or erupt in a nova or supernova. Infrared wavelengths are necessary to see into these dense gas and dust clumps.

The telescope will launch in December 2023 for a one-month mission around Earth’s South Pole.

More Information

NASA press release