this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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I like how the article discounts other deep space telescope ideas because they would require more advanced technology than we already possess....but then is like "but if we use the sun, all we have to do is send a whole bunch of spacecraft 3 times farther than the farthest thing we've ever sent".
It's an interesting idea. But even if we got the required satellites that far out, at that distance, how could you expect to aim this sun telescope? Or would it just be stuck with whatever it's currently pointed at?
The satellites would still orbit the Sun, so youβd get a look at anything opposite the ecliptic at whatever its orbital period is. The parallax at those distances (seems like) is so great, even with long collection times youβd have probably years worth of exposure before a target moves out of the primary βlensβ.
Right...so we would be unable to retask it to observe something else that did not align with the satellite's current orbital position. Seems like a pretty big limitation to me.
Well, we would choose a specific thing or group of things close together that we want to look at, and launch for that specific thing.
Once done with the primary mission, all the neat things we pick up on while getting the primary taken care of can be looked at.
That's what we already do with space things anyway. It just happens that most of the telescopes we've built to date were more general purpose. Hubble has/d a much broader scope than JWST, but you can't discount either for their value.
I'm probably not making my point very well, but basically we wouldn't just send it somewhere arbitrarily (which I'm sure you already know, but some might not think about that) and hope to find something cool, we will intentionally target something and then go from there.
We technically have the tech to do this, what we lack, is species cohesion and cooperation to lower the effective costs of said endeavor, and the patience to wait for it to set up. Being so far from the inner planets means it's gonna take a long time to get in position.