Telescopes OF THE FUTURE!!! (esp. for James Nicoll but open to others)

[seawasp]

I'm wondering what it would be reasonable to expect remote imaging cameras (of various types -- IR, radio, visible) to be able to see in a distant part of OUR solar system in, say, 2040-2050 or so, assuming that there was no big "push" to develop space imaging capacity until about 10 years before, so most of the development simply continued from where we are at whatever the "normal" pace might be. What's the smallest object that could be seen, what kind of material could be sensed, etc.

I'm particularly interested in being able to track a spaceship and pieces thereof and how much detail on what timescale could be determined from here, or possibly Mars orbit, to the Jupiter system.

Any good sources/guesses?

Comments

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

I expect that using interferometry and the very long baselines that orbital telescopes give you, we could resolve a cole can out to the orbit of Pluto with today's data processing and signals tech. Your future people should have no problem.

[kengr]

I'll drop a note to a pro astronomy type who did some analysis on something similar for the Traveller mailing list some years back.

I will note that we *already* have sensors that detect single photons in most wavelengths. So once you get outside the atmosphere the controlling factors are detector (mirror) size and quality and detector spacing for synthetic aperture setups.

And don't forget that in IR wavelengths the ships will be emitting *huge* amounts of power (essentially all the power of the reactors).

That makes them really hard to miss.

[aygar.livejournal.com]

The Space Interferometry Mission which is supposed to have angular resolution of 3.47 microarcseconds. The SIM is near future tech (required accuracy has been demonstrated in a lab).

Assuming worst case distance between Earth and Jupiter of 6.47 AU that would give a resolution of about 14 meters.

[selidor]

Hmm. Ok, we complete the current generation of 30 m-class optical/near IR telescopes (GMT, E-ELT, TMT) between 2020-2025, so at 2040, we'll have full planning and design underway for whatever comes next after that, but it won't be operational yet. ESO does like thinking about that 100-m telescope.

Being conservative: in optical/near IR ground-based, there'll be a 30-m aperture with third-gen (c.2040) instruments either available, or just being installed. If you're really lucky, there'd be an LSST-II with a <30 m aperture available. That'd do your orbit detection for a spacecraft with no trouble at all, <100m diameter out to Jupiter. If it's flaring in IR, something like a WISE-IV survey observatory in orbit would also pick it up very quickly. LSST itself is surveying the sky in three nights, so I expect that'd be a maximum detection baseline if it appeared out of the blue. The oddity of its orbit would also influence how quickly it got flagged by the automated software.

Then we could point a JWST-II for the high-res IR, the ground-based 30m with adaptive optics or HST-II (say an orbital 10 m) if there's one of those, for optical imagery. Maybe an Arecibo-II to get a shape model of it from the radar - the Chinese are keen on doing one in this next decade, they could have a larger Arecibo by then, and that should be able to do a shape model if the object's as close as Jupiter.

[izeinwinter.livejournal.com]

There is a disjunct here. Pretty much anything which is under power, or hot, will be detected as a point source very, very quickly, and extremely far out by some sky survey or other. This gives you course, speed, and if its accelerating, a least a rough guess at mass. Actual details about structure and appearance.. Depends how much of a priority it is, and what is available to be pointed at that direction.

[seawasp]

Yes, I know that stealth in space -- in the sense of "I didn't know there was a ship there" is virtually impossible. (at least normal space. I took care of THAT problem in GCA, oh yes)

What I want to know is if something happens to a couple of ships "in transit", could you tell WHAT happened to them from remote -- tell the difference between hitting a meteor, explosion in the battery room, or being hit with a missile, etc..

Additionally, if you were following their course and they disappear behind Jupiter, presumably to do an Oberth, and they do a different maneuver than you expect -- a drastically different one, either slowing or speeding them up by a lot more than you thought -- would you lose track of them for a while, or would the regular heat of their life-support, etc., still make them jump out if you were even looking in their general direction? (they're close to Jupiter, so if Jupiter's IR signature could interfere, it IS interfering...

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

If you're tracking them with a ridiculously powerful scope with a therefore minimal field of view, you could lose them (just like you can lose a target looking down the scope on a rifle). On the other hand, whatever you used to track/identify them in the first place, if it wasn't watching already, just has to be pointed in that direction and you'd nail them again without too much trouble.

Personally, if I were running the Really Distant Early Warning System, one of my computers would be set up to run simulations of what a vehicle, given its trajectory, velocity, acceleration, and position when it disappeared from view could theoretically do given the known propulsion capabilities, with very liberal parameters on its propulsion. That would give an envelope of where/when it would show up again, so I'd make sure my field of view/scan area was large enough to cover it. If it doesn't show up in that envelope, obviously all hands are on deck to find the damn thing.

[izeinwinter.livejournal.com]

Well, in a future where there are multiple ships flying around Jupiter, some of the more ambitious satellite very large array plans will have been built. This gives you resolution in the meters range for anything in Jupiter orbit, which will let you tell if its a missile strike or the propulsion system blowing sky high.. if, and only if, the observation is important enough to disrupt the astronomers using the monstrosity to map out the continents of planets near other stars. I think "spaceship explodes" would qualify in most cases, but it might not if it happens on a regular basis. Say, unmanned freighters powered by a nuclear system built on the principle of "if it still arrives intact most of the time without this safety system, scrap it for the mass savings"

The surface of most planets is a problem.

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

Radar mapping.

http://www.solarviews.com/cap/venus/venus1.htm

That is 3k resolution. I want that down to the sub meter range preferably I want to be able to read the inscriptions on the temples...on pluto. ;)

Re: The surface of most planets is a problem.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

That's low rez because of the atmosphere on Venus. RADARSAT-2 can do detail work at 1 meter resolution, while it's wide-beam (500km wide surface sweep) is 100m resolution.

The main issue is beam spread over distance. Beyond Venus and a few NEOs, radar mapping from Earth or nearby satellites is pretty much out of the question.

Re: The surface of most planets is a problem.

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

Yes, until someone figures out how to do stimulated emission at a distance without yottawatts of power we are in the dark.