Put a telescope in space is financially expensive for any space agency. However, NASA managed to send an observatory to Earth orbit that works for about 100 days and can record data from the most remote places in the universe.
This is how the initiative of the Super BIT Space Telescope was born, which although it is very far from Hubble or James Webb, challenges them with its limited technology.
Launched from Wanaka, New Zealand, SuperBIT (Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope) took its first images 33 kilometers above Earth’s surface, in a near-space environment. The idea is for it to be located 40,000 meters from our soil and from that region to capture as much information as possible.
The advantage of Super BIT is that it works with a balloon-based mechanism. So this means that, although its operation is for a limited time, it also registers a fairly low cost if we compare it with Hubble or James Webb.
A superpressure balloon can circumnavigate the Earth’s radius for up to 100 days, collecting an enormous amount of scientific data. The balloon also floats at an altitude above most of Earth’s atmosphere, making it suitable for many astronomical observations, NASA reports.
The SuperBIT telescope captures images of galaxies in the visible to near ultraviolet light spectrum, which is well within the capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope, but with a wider field of view.
The goal of the mission is to map the dark matter around galaxy clusters by measuring the way these massive objects warp the space around them, also called “weak gravitational lensing.”
Some may have doubts about what it is capable of achieving, but this image of the Tarantula Nebula, some 160,000 light-years away, gives credit for the advancement and cost reduction that these types of projects can mean for NASA.
The first image is from Super BIT and the second is from Hubble.
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