|
''Whipple'' mission was a proposal for a space observatory in the NASA Discovery Program 2014 announcement of opportunity.〔(The Whipple Mission Exploring the Oort cloud and the Kuiper Belt - C Alcock et al. )〕 It would orbit in a halo orbit around the Earth–Sun and have a photometer that would try to detect Oort cloud and Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) by recording their transits of distant stars.〔 It would be designed to detect objects out to 10,000 AU.〔 Some of the mission goals included directly detecting the Oort cloud for the first time and determining the outer limit of the Kuiper belt.〔 ''Whipple'' would be designed to detect objects as small as a kilometer (half a mile) across at a distance of .〔 It would need a relatively wide field of view and fast recording cadence to capture transits that may last only seconds.〔(A Fast, Wide Field of View, Catadioptric Telescope for Whipple )〕 In 2011, ''Whipple'' was one of three proposals to win a technology development award in a Discovery program selection.〔(NASA Selects 'Whipple' Mission for Technology Development )〕 The design proposed was a catadioptric cassegrain telescope of 77-centimeter aperture.〔()〕 The smallest KBO yet discovered was discovered in 2009 by poring over data from the Hubble Space Telescope's fine guidance sensors.〔()〕 They detected a transit of an object against a distant star, which, based on the duration and amount of dimming, was calculated to be a KBO about in diameter.〔()〕 It has been suggested that the ''Kepler'' observatory may be able to detect objects in the Oort cloud.〔(DETECTABILITY OF OORT CLOUD OBJECTS USING KEPLER - 2009 )〕 ==See also== *''New Horizons'' (Pluto and KBO flyby probe) *Near-Earth Object Camera, a proposed space telescope (Discovery program semi-finalist) *Whipple shield (a type of shielding especially for spacecraft) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Whipple (spacecraft)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|