Laser Guided Space Telescope Array?

Question

I saw a documentary a few years back that mentioned a plan for an array of orbital radio telescopes that would function in unison; and kept in sync with lasers. I think it said it was supposed to be implemented around 2014. Does anyone have any info on this?

Answer 1

Without more information, I can’t tell which proposed system you might mean. Some brief descriptions of candidates are below. Plus, you may find the list at the below URL helpful:

http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/astroweb/telspace.html

The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), also called "SIM PlanetQuest," is a NASA instrument originally expected to be launched in December of 2011; however due to budget cuts it will now launch no sooner than between October 2014 and April 2015. Once in orbit, scientists expect SIM to be able to make very accurate astrometric observations of distant stars. SIM will also be a powerful general astrophysical observatory.

Constellation-X, the Constellation X-ray Mission (formerly HTXS, the High Throughput X-ray Spectroscopy program) is a Next Generation X-ray Observatory dedicated to observations at high spectral resolution, providing as much as a factor of 100 increase in sensitivity over currently planned high resolution X-ray spectroscopy missions. In February 2006, its status was changed to "delayed indefinitely".

The LISA is the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna experiment, a joint venture of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). It is currently in a design phase and is expected to begin observations in or around 2015. [1] It will have a nominal mission lifetime of 5 years with an extended lifetime of 10 years.

XEUS is the X-ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy space observatory that is being developed by the European Space Agency as a successor to the successful XMM-Newton X-ray satellite telescope.

Darwin is a proposed European Space Agency (ESA) mission designed to directly detect Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars, and search for evidence of life on these planets. The launch date will be at or after 2020 according to space.com. The current design envisions three free-flying space telescopes, each at least 3 meters in diameter, flying in formation as an astronomical interferometer. These telescopes will redirect the light to the main spacecraft which will contain the beam combiner, spectrographs and cameras for the interferometer array, and which will also act as a communications hub.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

This website may help you