Super Cold Telescope Will Be A Ball

SPACE SCIENCE

The Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) built by Goddard Space Flight Center is being integrated into its cryogenic telescope assembly and tested at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. It is part of the Space Infrared Telescope Assembly (SIRTF) mission slated for launch in 2002. Image courtesy of Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

Boulder - October 3, 2000
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has received delivery of the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) for integration into the last of the Great Observatories. IRAC is among three instruments that will be aboard the Space Infrared Telescope Assembly (SIRTF) when it launches in 2002.

Ball Aerospace will perform cryogenic telescope assembly (CTA) integration and testing prior to delivering the CTA to Lockheed Martin Space Systems, where it will be integrated with the spacecraft to form the observatory.

IRAC is one of three instruments that will share light collected by SIRTF's primary mirror and provide images at near infrared wavelengths. Ball Aerospace designed and built the other two SIRTF instruments that will also be housed in the CTA: the Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) that will provide coverage at longer wavelengths, and the Infrared Spectrometer (IRS) that will provide spectra of astronomical objects at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths.

The concept for SIRTF originated more than 20 years ago to develop and launch a series of space-based telescopes that would cover a wide range of wavelengths, making discoveries that ground-based telescopes cannot. SIRTF will gather infrared signals from the universe a distance over 10 times further than previously accomplished.

Ball Aerospace has participated in all four of the Great Observatories; the other three are the Hubble Space Telescope, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

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SPACE SCIENCE

In Search Of The Biggest Explosions In universe

Chicago - October 2, 2000
NASA will launch a satellite this coming Saturday, that will seek out gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe. Called the High Energy Transient Explorer-2, this latest science bird will monitor for gamma ray bursts 24 hours a day.

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