NASA’s newest space telescope,
Chadra will allow scientists from around
the world to waste their time looking at X-ray images of the universe.
NASA also claims it will be used to look at comets in our solar system,
but this will occupy a tiny fraction of the mission.
It will not help us defend against meteors/comets
on a collision course w/ earth.
It will not help deal w/ global climate change.
It's goal is to answer the following meaningless questions:
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What and where is the "Dark Matter" in our universe?
The largest and most massive
objects in the universe are galaxy clusters -
enormous collections of galaxies, some like our own.
These galaxies are bound together into a cluster by gravity.
Much of their mass is in the form of an incredibly hot, X-ray
emitting gas that fills the entire space between the galaxies.
Yet, neither the mass of the galaxies, nor the mass of the
hot X-ray gas is enough to provide the gravity
that we know holds the cluster together.
X-ray observations with the Chandra X-ray Observatory will
map the location of the dark matter and help us to identify it.
What is the powerhouse driving the
explosive activity in many distant galaxies?
The centers of many distant galaxies are incredible
sources of energy and radiation – especially X-rays.
Scientists theorize that massive black holes are at the
center of these active galaxies, gobbling up any material –
even a whole star – that passes too close.
Detailed studies with the Chandra X-ray Observatory
can probe the faintest of these active galaxies, and
study not only how their energy output changes with time,
but also how these objects produce their
intense energy emissions in the first place.
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The last of NASA's 3 wasteful mega-observatories
(Hubble Space Telescope and the Compton
Gamma Ray Observatory are the other 2)
X-rays are absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere,
so NASA 'needs' the expensive space-based
observatories to study these phenomena.
(Lots of staving children need 35 cents worth
of vitamins/day to keep from going blind,
but you don't see NASA worrying about that.)
Originally known as the
Advance X-ray Astrophysics Facility it was
renamed in honor of the late Indian-American
Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
It was carried into low Earth orbit by the Space Shuttle Columbia.
(A $500 million launch.)
It will be deployed from the shuttle’s cargo bay at 155 miles above the Earth.
Two firings of an attached Inertial Upper Stage rocket
and several firings of its own on-board rocket motors
after separating from the Inertial Upper Stage will
place the observatory into its working orbit.
Chandra will be placed in a highly elliptical (oval-shaped) orbit.
At its closest approach to Earth, it will
be at an altitude of about 6,200 miles.
At its farthest, 87,000 miles away (1/3 of the way to the Moon).
It will circle the Earth every 64 hours, carrying it far
outside the belts of radiation that surround our planet.
This radiation would overwhelm the observatory’s sensitive instruments.
Chandra will be outside this radiation long enough to take
55 hrs of uninterrupted observations during each orbit.
During periods of interference from the radiation belts,
scientific observations will not be taken. |
