TECH

SpaceX Dragon to berth at ISS with Florida Tech experiment

James Dean
FLORIDA TODAY

A Florida Institute of Technology-led research project arriving Thursday morning at the International Space Station aims to advance imaging technology that could one day snap pictures of planets orbiting other stars.

“We’re talking about Earth-like planets in Earth-like orbits around sun-like stars, where the likelihood of there being life is highest,” said Dan Batcheldor, head of Florida Tech’s Physics and Space Sciences Department in Melbourne.

The project represents just a few of the nearly 5,500 pounds of cargo being delivered to the station by a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that launched Sunday from Kennedy Space Center.

The unmanned craft aborted a planned Wednesday morning berthing at the station because of faulty navigation data, but was said to be in good health and ready for another try Thursday.

"This is an easily correctable issue," said NASA TV commentator Rob Navias."Dragon itself is in excellent shape."

Astronauts aboard the orbiting research complex planned to capture the Dragon with a 58-foot robotic arm around 6 a.m. Thursday.

“I’m very much looking forward to watching this thing make it safely to ISS,” Batcheldor said of his payload.

The project will demonstrate an imaging technology called a charge injection device, or CID, that has not been flown in space before.

Packed in a tissue box-sized container weighing less than three pounds, the camera will be mounted on a platform outside the station for about six months.

That exposure will test how well its image quality holds up to the radiation, vacuum, and extreme temperatures of low Earth orbit, a first step toward the technology being eligible to fly on a small space-based telescope.

Batcheldor has already developed a concept for a small observatory featuring a CID, which could be scaled up to one big enough to directly image “exoplanets” — planets orbiting stars other than our sun — similar to a group NASA announced Wednesday.

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Scientists said they have discovered a solar system 40 light years away that includes seven Earth-sized planets, three of which orbit within the star's habitable zone, where liquid water could exist.

“This adds to the statistics we have showing the commonality of Earth-sized planets around nearby stars,” said Batcheldor. “And the more we keep looking, the more likely it is that we will find that Earth-like planet around a sun-like star that will enable us to get that next Pale Blue Dot image.”

The type of camera Batcheldor is testing could reveal oceans on another world.

For a sense of how challenging it is to look directly at a planet orbiting another star, Batcheldor said, imagine trying to see a traffic light while the sun is rising directly behind it.

"It’s incredibly difficult to see the color of those traffic lights," he said. "And that’s the same type of contrast ratio problem that this camera solves.”

It does so using active pixels, meaning each pixel is controlled independently. A decade or so ago, the added electronics needed to do that still produced “noisy” images, but the technology — developed decades ago for use in semiconductor memory chips — has improved.

Batcheldor began testing the cameras with ground-based observations using Florida Tech’s Ortega telescope in Melbourne. Those tests soon will be repeated from the Canary Islands.

The device now reaching the ISS, which was funded primarily by a grant from the Brevard County-based Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, eventually will return to Earth on another SpaceX Dragon craft for analysis.

Besides the potential to directly image distant planets, the cameras could be useful for monitoring Earth from space for environmental or defense missions.

“We are really looking forward to demonstrating this technology so that we can move forward the cutting edge of our imaging capabilities,” said Batcheldor.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 orjdean@floridatoday.com.And follow on Twitter at@flatoday_jdeanand on Facebook atfacebook.com/jamesdeanspace.