Building a DIY telescope is one thing, but building a professional-grade telescope that can robotically track celestial objects is entirely another. Most of us have neither the time nor technical capabilities to build and program a robotic observatory ourselves, so the only option we’ve got is to dish out thousands of dollars to buy one. Until now, that is.
For the past couple years, London’s Open Space Agency has been developing a contraption it calls the Ultrascope — a downloadable, open-source telescope that can be (mostly) generated by a 3D printer, controlled by simple robotic parts, and that can capture images with a smartphone camera.
To be fair, you can’t make all of the Ultrascope’s components with a 3D printer alone, but the device’s creators have gone to great lengths to make the it extremely cheap and easy to construct. If you don’t count the cost of the smartphone, the entire kit only costs $312, and can be assembled with a single tool. “The idea is that you use one screw and an Allen key and then you can literally just get the parts and then construct it,” designer James Parr told Science Magazine.
Once it’s set up, the telescope can communicate with satellites to determine its exact location on Earth — at which point the machine can use its motors to automatically focus itself onto celestial bodies like stars, planets, and asteroids. But there’s a lot more to it than just basic observation. Using your camera’s smartphone and Internet connection, Ultrascope will be able to snap pictures of all the objects you spot and immediately upload them to the cloud for post-processing and analysis.
The idea is that with a large, distributed network of these telescopes in backyards all over the world, OSA could pick up scientifically valuable observations from a bunch of different angles. This system would also allow you to check out what people in the other parts of the globe are looking at, in real time. Too many clouds over your city? Just use the accompanying mobile app to tap into a video feed from somewhere with clearer skies.
The OSA first announced the project just over a year ago, and now that all the beta testing is done, they’re almost ready to unleash the design to the public. The organization plans to launch a scaled-down model with a 9-centimeter mirror at the San Diego Maker Faire this October, and the full-size 30-centimeter model is due to be released shortly thereafter.
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.