The Shoebox Telescope Hunting Escaping Starlight
A newly launched ultraviolet CubeSat will watch stellar nurseries and supernova wreckage. Its quarry is the radiation that may have helped turn the early universe transparent.
The Discovery
A telescope the size of a shoebox went to orbit on October 1. NASA says SPRITE launched on a commercial rideshare alongside two other agency-supported small spacecraft. The University of Colorado Boulder team will operate it.
SPRITE is designed to detect a band of ultraviolet light blocked by Earth's atmosphere. Its planned one-year observing program targets star-forming regions and supernova remnants in and near the Milky Way. Launch is confirmed; observations and findings are still ahead.
What Makes It Strange
The question reaches much farther back than the objects the telescope will see. In the early universe, neutral gas absorbed light. Astronomers want to know how radiation from galaxies escaped into intergalactic space and helped ionize that gas. Nearby regions are proxies, not photographs of the first galaxies.
- Hardware: a roughly 13.5-by-9-by-9-inch spacecraft with a specialized ultraviolet telescope.
- Targets: stellar birthplaces and the debris of exploded stars.
- Open question: how effectively high-energy radiation escapes a galaxy into surrounding space.
The Implications
NASA says sensitive detectors and mirror coatings could inform larger future ultraviolet observatories. If SPRITE measures useful local analogues, it may sharpen models of how the cosmic fog cleared. That is a research aim, not a discovery already made by this mission. A picture of a nearby remnant cannot by itself settle the history of the early universe.
A tiny telescope is going looking for the light that got away.