![]() Since being decommissioned, they have been used regularly as first stages for research missions such as ours. The first stage is a Terrier missile, originally built as a surface-to-air missile (SAM) and used by the Navy in the 1960s. The rocket is a two-stage Terrier-Black Brant Mk 1 system. And when it comes to sunlight, space is a harsh environment by virtue of its sheer emptiness-without the atmosphere in the way, the sun feels roughly twice as strong in earth orbit as it does on Earth's surface. ![]() We all know you can start fires by focusing sunlight with a magnifying glass just a few centimeters across-imagine what would happen to the innards of Hubble from being blasted by the focused beam of light from its 2.4 meter (7.8 foot) wide mirror!īut even if Hubble's mirror isn't pointed directly at the sun (as would be the case with Venus), sunlight falling on the inside of the telescope tube can be dangerous to Hubble's sensitive equipment by heating its surfaces too quickly and releasing paint or gas. To consider the extreme case, if Hubble were to be aimed directly at the sun for observations, the result would be disastrous. This is why we can only see it in the morning or evening-just as the sun is rising or setting-and it makes it too dangerous for Hubble to look at. Since Venus orbits closer to the sun than earth, it always appears close to the sun in the sky. They have a good reason: Hubble isn't allowed to point too close to the sun to avoid damaging its instruments. They won't let us-believe us, we've asked! It's ok, though, we're not offended. In fact, because our telescope is so efficient for the UV light that we will be observing, it can observe in 5 minutes what would take Hubble four hours to observe. That leaves the telescope only about two and a half minutes to find and lock onto Venus.įour minutes and ten seconds of data may not sound like a lot, but our telescope's optics are specially designed for our spectroscopic observations. Our goal is to collect at least 250 seconds (4 minutes, 10 seconds) of observations. In between, we should have almost seven minutes of flight time above our mission goal of 110 km with which to collect data-three and a half on the way up, and three and a half on the way back down. ![]() Instead, it will fall back to earth on a ballistic trajectory less than 10 minutes after launch, where we will recover the payload (the telescope) to use again. In fact, this is over half as high as the Hubble Space Telescope, but our rocket won't be carrying enough speed to go into orbit around the earth. This is a suborbital rocket that will take the telescope to a height of 300 km in less than 5 minutes-well into outer space (defined as 100 km altitude), and above most of the earth's atmosphere so we can observe ultraviolet (UV) light from Venus that would otherwise be absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere. To be more precise, it is a telescope that will be mounted inside a sounding rocket. What is VeSpR? VeSpR stands for the Venus Spectral Rocket. so we DO know the D/H ratio of Venus? Then why do we need VeSpR at all?! ![]() So how do we get from a measurement of D/H to determining how much water was on Venus? So why hasn't water on earth been destroyed and lost to space due to photodissociation? So what about the rocket that it will be on?īut what causes all that water vapor to actually disappear out into space?īut what could be so powerful as to break the molecular bonds of matter? Why not use Hubble anyway? At least you wouldn't have to send up another rocket!
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