The U.S. Department of Energy is building a digital camera that’ll eclipse any camera in your arsenal. The 3.2-gigapixel shooter will be the heart of the upcoming Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), capturing stunning high-resolution images of the southern sky from its Chilean location. Images and video from the camera will be used to catalog stars and galaxies at a level never before possible.
The LSST camera is among the largest image capturing devices ever built. When assembled, it will be the size of a small car and will weigh more than 3 tons. It has an effective resolution of 3.2-gigapxels, which is such a high-resolution that it will require 1500 high-resolution televisions to display just a single image. Unlike previous gigapixel images that were stitched together, the LSST’s camera can snap this high-resolution photo in a single shot. The camera also will be equipped with a filter-changing mechanism and shutter that allows it to view wavelengths of light from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared (0.3-1 μm) wavelengths.
Using this gargantuan camera, the LSST will detect billions of celestial objects over a ten-year period, producing a photo archive of approximately 6 million gigabytes per year. It also will be used to generate movies of the sky like we’ve never seen before. Researchers will use this data to study the formation of galaxies, track asteroids, and further our knowledge of dark energy, which comprises a significant portion of the universe and is still very much a mystery.
The building phase of the camera recently received approval from the DOE, and construction of the camera components will begin soon. An international team universities and labs, including DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, will be involved in the building process. Researchers at SLAC will oversee the construction, assembly and testing of the camera, a process that will take approximately five years.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.